Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom (And Whimsy)
Posted on December 10, 2025 under Wednesday’s Words of Wisdom with no comments yet
A perfect hand. A rarity.
“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
Nobody has ever accused me of being a card shark. OK. I was pretty good at playing Fish and War as a child (!) but once I moved up to 45’s and Hearts, I realized that there were people far more adept at playing cards than me. I loved playing cribbage, but I found my true passion in the basement of the Angus L. MacDonald Library on the campus of St.F.X. University where I learned how to play bridge during my university days.
Depending on the card game, there’s a certain level of luck and a goodly amount of skill involved. Of course, we all love it when we are dealt a winning hand whether it’s a royal flush in poker or a 29 hand in crib. But these are rarities. Most of the hands we’re dealt are average, and occasionally we’re dealt a real shitty hand.
Nobody cares much for whiners. These people always seem to lay the blame on others when things aren’t going right. Cards is an excellent metaphor for life. There are people who are dealt a great hand in life and very often, the outcome is not always what one might think. If everything goes your way all the time, then trouble is just around the corner when adversity rears its ugly head.
The people that I admire most are the ones that take a poor hand and play it well.
I don’t play much bridge any more. When I was first learning the game, I would get annoyed when I was dealt thirteen lousy cards. But as I improved and started playing with people very good at the game, I noticed that they never seemed to get perturbed when the cards were not in their favour. As Paul Newman famously said in the 1967 film, Cool Hand Luke, “Sometimes nothing is a cool hand.” A good bridge player keeps track of all the cards played and can eventually put the other team down even with the worst possible cards.
I know some people who are having a very hard time. Some families seem cursed as illnesses and death seem to crop up far too often. They have barely survived one trauma when another appears. Even a card shark would have difficulty playing this hand.
Two people who grew up in my neighbourhood when I was a child developed illnesses early in life that left them with enormous challenges throughout their lives. These women were both very bright and could have made an enormous contribution to society had they been healthy. But wait. They did. With ultimate courage and grace, they faced these hardships head on. They played the cards that they were dealt and in all the years I knew them, they never uttered a complaint. It often seems that those who appear to live a charmed existence seem to have plenty of complaints while others, like my neighbours, take what they are given and live a meaningful life, teaching us resilience, humility and stoicism.
Rudyard Kipling said it best in his poem If: “If you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.”
Life is no sleight of hand. It’s real and it’s hard and it’s beautiful.
And when you have nothing in your hands, you can bluff like Cool Hand Luke or take a page out of Kenny Roger’s Gambler:
“You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.”
Have a great weekend.
P.S. I have two book launches this weekend: Saturday December 13th at 2:00 p.m.at the Heritage Museum and for you folks up in Mount Cameron Circle, I’ll be at The Maples on Sunday 14th at 2:00 p.m.
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