Play the Hand You’ve Been Dealt
You’ve been dealt a bad hand, placed against a stacked deck!
—Words by Sage Francis, 2007, from the album, Hell of a Year
Our lives are a series of metaphors unfolding to paint a picture of our journey through life. I suspect if you took the time to examine your life through the lens of a metaphor, you would begin to see a pattern emerging and illustrating who you are, why you see the world as you do, and how you arrived at where you are today. Just as in the story of Jason and his record company, you could envision the attributes that reflect how you see yourself. If the metaphor that you arrive at is one that is less than complimentary such as, “My life is a toilet flushing continuously,” you don’t have to let it remain that way. This is what this book is about.
I discovered this principle as I processed the events in my life and began to see patterns that I was not too happy about. I could see how rejection at an early age affected my decisions and the outcomes of many potentially successful opportunities. I would often see an opportunity coming my way but because of a fear of rejection, I would sabotage it before I could experience the outcome. I would work very hard to become a final candidate for whatever it was, spelling bee champ, baseball team, or Boy Scout leader. However, because I was afraid that I would not be the one chosen, I would remove myself with a comment or an action that would disqualify me. This was my way of coping with my metaphor of, “My life is a game of cards.”
As I tell my story along with the story of Jason and his record label, you will begin to see how true transformation can take place by identifying the attributes of our metaphor and changing those that are detrimental to our behavior and achievement. Sometimes it requires us to determine and act upon the polar opposite of a particular destructive attribute.
Changing the attributes of our metaphor points us toward guiding principles that, when applied, can change our destinies. Sometimes, we need to change our metaphor completely to one that is productive rather than destructive. However, to do this, we need to first examine our current and past life behaviors and experiences. It isn’t easy but it can be done through the process that I lay out in the following chapters, if you are willing to allow it to take place. This might seem like a passive exercise, however, it requires active participation in the process. Through the identification and adaptation of metaphors, you can develop guiding principles that will pilot your future decisions, actions, and reactions. As you apply these guiding principles on a regular basis, you will see true and lasting transformation take place in your lives and the lives of those around you.
Developing guiding principles is usually the last step in the process. However, for the sake of clarity, I will start with guiding principles based on the metaphor, “My life is a game of cards.” Later I will discuss, in depth, the process of how we arrive at our guiding principles and how we apply them on a regular basis in order for lasting change to take place. Let me begin here by playing my opening hand.
Most people will tell you that if you talk to me for more than 10 minutes, I will mention the title of a movie or the lyrics to a song. I can’t help it. I was born with a song in my heart and a movie unfolding before my eyes. My accomplishments up through my early thirties were significant but not extraordinary. I had completed college, married a beautiful wife, had two beautiful children, served as a Naval Officer, earned an MBA, been a successful entrepreneur, and played small parts in television shows. Some would say that this is enough for a lifetime but for me, other than establishing a wonderful family, it had all been hollow. I lived to achieve for the sake of achievement alone. Happiness was not part of the equation. Joy was only an afterthought. It had been this way for all the years I can recall going back to my childhood growing up in Japan and later in Hawaii.
Contracting polio during the early 1950s was not uncommon. Unfortunately, it was the disease du jour for many people, both young and old. It is a debilitating disease of the central nervous system. It can literally paralyze your lungs so that you are unable to breathe on your own. Pictures of patients in iron lungs still hold strong memories for many of us. Fortunately, my polio was caught early and I experienced only partial paralysis in my legs. Naturally, this was devastating for a young boy whose life typically revolved around running, jumping, and playing. For me, the boundaries of the crib that I lived in defined my life into early childhood. The walls were bars that kept me in. They were my looking glass to the possible but the improbable. I lived in a hospital that included others who had been dealt a similar hand.
I had a small friction bus toy that I played with every day. It took me to places far away where I experienced an imaginary life beyond my crib. This life included total mobility. I could run, jump, and play. I knew the wind and the rain as my companions while I raced about life in my magic bus with a total abandonment, only to be brought back to the reality of my crummy hand by a nurse coming to change my diapers.
For some reason, unbeknownst to me, I was taken to a foster family on weekends. I remember they had two children, a boy of about 5 and a girl of about 7 years of age. Although a couple of years older, the boy was my best and only friend. Since I was unable to walk due to the paralysis, I’m sure our playtimes were a bit subdued. I remember distinctly him telling me that I was lucky to be going to live with rich Americans. At the time I didn’t know what he was talking about but apparently an adoption was on my horizon. My hand appeared to be improving.
Physical therapy had helped strengthen my legs, and I was able to walk but with a pronounced limp. At night my legs would twist into severe cramps, causing me to cry out as the muscles rebelled against the work that they had to do during my waking hours. Each day my legs grew stronger and I could easily stand and move about a room, eventually becoming able to run, albeit not very fast. The first time I saw the movie Forest Gump, with Tom Hanks (remember what I said about the first 10 minutes with me?), the scene with him running down the road as his leg braces started to come apart really hit me. The new freedom that he was experiencing as he ran from the bullies was something that I could relate to.
There Is Always Another Card to Draw
The trip to the airport when I was four years old was quiet. It was a small regional airport on the Southern island of Kyushu, Japan. My nurse, who I called “Oneeson,” meaning elder sister, sat holding me in the taxi. Upon arrival, she carried me to the steps of the airplane and handed me up to the Japanese pilot of the twin-prop cargo plane. Oneeson and I cried as I was ripped from my world of bars and busses, and an occasional diaper changing. I knew something significant was happening but I was unable to relate it to my young friend’s comment that he had made several weeks earlier. All I knew was that a man that I didn’t recognize, in a cap and uniform was carrying me into a large contraption that made a lot of noise. He placed me in a jump seat with boxes, cargo netting, and other supplies all around me. I’m not sure why it was a cargo plane, but I’m sure I felt like a piece of cargo.
At the time, I was wearing everything that I owned. I looked like an overstuffed teddy bear. I still have the plastic sandals that I was wearing on that flight. They are a reminder of a time when everything was outside of my control, a time when cards were being played that positioned me for either success or failure in life. The hand that I had been dealt was a losing hand but if I could just draw another card, it could turn that hand into a winning one.
If I strained my neck, there was a small porthole where I was able to see out. After the plane was airborne, white wisps of clouds engulfed the porthole and then thinned out as we rose above the clouds into clear sky. Although I was totally engrossed with the beautiful scenery with its blue, white, and occasional patches of green rice paddies below, the trip seemed to take forever. The landing in Yokosuka was uneventful, and I knew this part of the adventure was over. However, I was headed for many more surprises. The pilot released me from my buckles and carried me to a waiting couple at the bottom of the stairs. Remember, this was before motorized, elevated walkways. In those days, the ground crew would push a metal staircase on wheels to the side of the plane and passengers would climb down to the tarmac and proceed to the terminal.
The woman looked like my foster mother, beautiful and easily Japanese. The man, however, was strange looking. He did not look like any Japanese man that I had ever seen. He had an incredible white smile and eyes the color of the sky. He lifted me up on his shoulders as we walked away from the plane. I was in a state of shock and crying. I could tell the couple was trying to talk to me but in a language that I had never heard. As they carried me to the parking lot, we approached a powder blue and white 1955 Chevy Bellaire convertible. Of course, I didn’t know what kind of car it was at the time, but I stopped crying the moment that I knew it belonged to them. I’m sure I was thinking about my young friend’s words about going to live with rich Americans.
Unfortunately, the part about their being rich turned out to be less than accurate. However, I would never trade them for the wealthiest parents in the entire world. Although they were not financially rich, they were rich in love and gave me that, as well as unconditional acceptance and a life that I could never have imagined. The deck had been reshuffled, and my hand was beginning to improve.
Learn the Rules of the Game
I graduated from high school a year early thanks to a California educational initiative in the early 1960s that established progressive schools where students could take exams and skip grades. I could have skipped two grades but my parents were rightfully concerned about my socialization into a much older peer group. I worked hard in school. I was the kid that always sat in front and raised my hand every time the teacher asked questions. I finished my work usually before anyone else, and still earned top grades. However, I know the teachers were irritated with me because I also tried to keep everyone laughing. In the sixth grade, I was voted most entertaining by the faculty. I thought it was a good thing but I suspect it was the only thing my teachers could give me that acknowledged any positive attributes I brought to the classroom educational experience. Needless to say, I enjoyed the attention.
As the son of a career military man, we moved a lot. I must have attended over a dozen schools by the time I graduated from high school. During my last year of high school, I found myself connecting with the wrong crowd. I started drinking and partying pretty heavily. There was a growing emptiness that I was trying to fill with alcohol and good times.
While the military draft and a war in Southeast Asia was taking many of my friends, I went off to college at Ohio State University, mainly because I didn’t know what else to do. Every night dinner conversations were hushed as the news anchors gave the body counts for the day. The Vietnam War, or police action as some politicians were still calling it, was first and foremost the topic of the day. Being young, I gravitated toward antiwar groups and the rhetoric that accompanied them. My antiwar activities, however, involved merely hanging out at antiwar rallies, mainly for the partying that accompanied any unified gathering of young people. It was like a rock concert on steroids.
I drifted from party to party, skipping classes whenever I thought I could get away with it. I was living for each day without concern for my future or the consequences of my actions. The more the emptiness grew, the more I sought to drown it in beer and parties. Finally, I received a notice from the Registrar’s office stating that I was being placed on academic probation. I left Ohio State after one year. I had played a wild card and lost.
That summer I moved back home with my parents, got a job at Sears, and tried to figure out what to do with my life. Eventually, I went the way of my father and joined the Navy. This decision came because I felt my options had come down to this and only this. In some ways, I felt like Richard Gere in Officer and a Gentleman. In the movie, he had grown up pretty independently. After going to college and trying to do several kinds of jobs, he had pretty much decided that the Navy was the only thing left for him. His father had been a career sailor as well. For him, it was his last chance to make something of himself. Like him, I felt I had nowhere left to go.
I hadn’t seriously considered the rules of life. I frittered away my options for the future in exchange for the short-term joy and satisfaction of the immediate. I never thought to find a mentor. In fact, the use of mentors, at that time, was not a widely publicized way of learning the rules. Most of my generation was distrustful of older people. We were stupid and prideful. We should have recognized that the rules of life were many and complex, and to listen to others who had gone before us would have been the best thing we could have done at the time. Many heartaches and lost hands could have been avoided.
Questions to Consider
1.Can you think of a limiting behavior that seems to stunt your emotional growth or prevent your professional advancement?
2.Based upon this limiting behavior, is there a metaphor that comes to mind that illustrates this behavior? For example, if your limiting behavior is constantly starting to speak before the other person completes their sentence or thought, your metaphor might be, “I’m a stomping elephant.” This signifies that you stomp on the things others say with little care or appreciation for what they are saying.
3.Can you identify the attribute of this limiting behavior? For example, if your limiting behavior is the one stated in the previous question, the attribute might be a lack of careful listening skills, or a lack of respect or appreciation for other’s opinions.