I spend a lot of my day alternating from housework to my work from home content writing and often in between to bring myself back to neutral I play a couple of games of patience on my phone. Now, if you’ve played the game enough of times, it doesn’t take you long to realise which move is your last and that given this particular hand there is nothing more that can be done but move on to the next game. And I began to wonder to myself, why is it so hard to do this in real life? Once we’ve realised that a particular job or relationship or bad habit is no longer serving us or has us stuck, why don’t we simply just let it go and move on?
The answer is of course that life is not a deck of cards; habits are hard to break, quitting a job, no matter how tiresome could land one in quite a spot if there is no backup plan and people…. well people surprise you. Unlike the value of a playing card where a ten of spades will always be a ten of spades, people’s values can change; someone whom you had given up on might do something that completely changes how you view them while someone whom you depended on might abandon you at the very hour that you needed them the most. This makes “playing the hand we have been dealt” a rather tricky situation. Real life is hardly a game of cards but more like the staircases at Hogwarts; leading one way one day and another the next, and in some cases changing direction while you are on them.
As a parent I know first hand how much and how consistently children change from being newborns to adolescents, and we as parents just keep bumbling along trying to deal with each new situation as it arises. Sometimes what worked for one child works for the next and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes what worked for one child a day ago won’t work for the same child today, and I can’t very well say that I’m out of moves, parenting isn’t working for me, let’s move on to the next game….. (just to be clear, I don’t want to).
So we bumble along and try to figure it out; parenting, relationships, jobs and habits. Each day a new direction, a new challenge and we all keep going, playing our cards till their values change and then we start over. My ten of spades today could be an ace of hearts tomorrow which just might help me achieve a victory and there’s nothing for it but to take them as they come.
Jacqueline Tellis 