I must admit that I thought that people who liked country music were uniformed about what was important in life. Even so I knew that the music contained messages for living, what it was like to be the salt of the earth people, and unrequited love stories. As I grew older country music grew on me. I think I listened enough to understand the content of the songs. I was attracted by the pounding beat and the ever-present refrain. I noticed that people who I admired loved the sound and words that the musicians played and sang. I listened more carefully and now find myself in love with this music in general and Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in particular.
One of the iconic pieces in country music is “The Gambler” made famous by Kenny Rogers and written by Don Schlitz in 1976. The essence of the song is in the refrain:
“You got to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There will be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done.”
The game of cards includes many rules for life for it means that certain guidelines and choices will be yours and yours alone to make. I can’t think of a better song to be sung during the confrontation between Putin and the Russians and Ukraine and the allies who support them.
One of the song’s themes is control and probability. You also have to be able to read the person across the table and come to a conclusion of what they might do. Hence, the term poker face showing no emotion. When you think about it, all of our lives are a gamble with probabilities galore. I sometimes shudder to know that where I am in life now could have been very different if I had made different decisions. I am also grateful to those people who believed in me when common sense would dictate that it would be less of a gamble if they didn’t. As I have listened to “The Gambler” over the years, I have found myself saying to others when I am in a difficult spot, “Don’t bet against me!” It has become a phrase that I often use, and family and friends who don’t bet against me are on that list of people of folks that I would do anything for. Some people like to be in the arena of choice rather than the safety of knowing what you do will result in a certain positive end.
“The Gambler” is about knowing that success and failure are two sides of the same coin. They are the great imposters. But the words of the song provide some answers to how we view the world around us, as we exist in the weatherman’s world where probably statements have become a way of living. Life is often having an unclear picture of what we should do. The “hold em’, fold em’ provides an answer in our personal arenas of life. They are the same two things that are needed in the Russian/Ukraine situation, the January 6 Insurrection as well as in our daily lives of mini threats from various quarters.
“The Gambler” is a paradigm of Aristotle’s Golden Mean where we should try to always stay away from extremes and seek to reach something in the middle. Extremes mean peril. We are seeing that first hand in the political life of our nation. Aristotle thought that the Golden Mean was the ethical way to live. “Moderation is all things” is at the heart of the Jewish and Christian Ethics. It is sometimes expressed as the via media, the middle way. Our dilemma with the Russian/Ukrainian threat is that we are living too much in the total surrender or total war choice which General Mark Milley describes would have a terrible outcome.
But there is one more thing that is missing in the Ukraine situation and too often in our daily relationships that is best described as a game of cards. Diplomacy has been employed and has been unsuccessful, but there is something in human nature that needs to be more front and center in our political motivations in Ukraine as well as in the split between the right and the left in our country. I have always been taught that the more secrets that you have, the worse will be your mental health. We become healthier when we are as transparent as possible.
In therapy the client comes to the therapist with his or her cards in the hold em’ against the chest position. In therapy they fold em’ with the cards face up because that is the hand of the therapist, complete transparency. The therapist’s cards are not in the hold em’ position. I have heard many times that we don’t really know what Putin is thinking; likewise, he doesn’t really know what we are thinking except that “he will pay a great price.”
Consider the threat to our nation on January 6. Trump and his allies have played the hold em’ posture in the disease of their secrets behind the scenes attempts to deny the will of the American people. Each day we see them fold em’ and now because of transparency that has been demanded, the disease of insurrection will probably to be cured.
We all have our secrets that are known to us and to no one else because we need to be seen in a certain way or are afraid of what would happen if others really knew them.
I run to a list of songs on Pandora. Some of them are country music. They remind me of important lessons in life. Freedom as a nation and as an individual is when you “know when to hold em’ and know when to fold em’.”
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