A Roll of the Dice

This weekend, I had been on my computer filling out online paperwork and whatnot, and my oldest son was hanging-out in the living room. I asked him to do the dishes and added, “When you’re done, we can play Yahtzee if you want.” He asks me to play sometimes and I’m usually too busy, but I enjoy the game and vowed to make time to do so. I needed the break, and I look forward to time with any of my sons.

While we were playing I noticed some choices about the rolls that my son was making, and I found myself scrunching faces at the results. He picked an option in which there were only two outcomes that could help him, and nothing to help him if he doesn’t get exactly what he wants: having two fives and two fours, he takes the last die and tries to get either a five or a four: a full house score. I remember thinking, “If I were him, I’d take all but the fives and roll.” That way I had three dice that might give me a healthy three-of-a-kind, a four-of-a-kind, minimum score on my fives, maybe a full house, maybe three sixes, perhaps a pretty good “chance” score, maybe nothing, but at least there would be more that could happen to help me.

Why didn’t he see these options? I think that youthful inexperience, (and the fact that we haven’t played Yahtzee a lot, so he hasn’t had practice), might have a part in it. It started to occur to me that this game, that is part chance and part skill, may mimic the level of happenstance and control that we each experience in life. We are handed circumstances randomly, “by God,” some may say, or “The Goddess,” or “Allah,” or “The Cosmos,” or just – because a series of events caused a chain reaction to happen in our direction and put us in a spot. For whatever reason, we are handed two fours, two fives, and a one, and we’re given an option to roll any of the five dice, so to speak. What we roll – how we handle any given situation – is our own control, and ultimately effects the outcome or continuance of our situation.

Say a friend has told you they’ll come pick you up to take you to the mall. You are next to a bus stop that goes straight to the mall, and a metro rail that goes faster but has more stops before the mall, and you can see the train’s light a little ways off. Your friend may or may not get distracted and forget their wallet, not find their keys … whoever it is may not be on top of things. What dice do you roll? Say you tell your friend you’ll meet them at the mall, and you let the train pass to catch the bus in five minutes. Once at the mall, you see a different dear old friend just as they walk into a nearby store, and you agree have coffee together. Then your driving friend calls to say they’re not coming because they’ve been in an accident. Then the metro rail pulls-up, and if you’d been on it you wouldn’t have seen your old friend pass by. Herein lies a bunch of rolls of the dice, and choices of what to roll afterwards. Have coffee? Go help the friend in an accident? Just go home and read a book? You may just add up your “ones,” or if you’re lucky you’ll get life’s equivalent of a “four-of-a-kind.”

In the case of job hunting, marriage, and (heaven knows!) children, rolling life’s dice takes an even more thoughtful process, the choices of what to roll becoming even more significant. Sometimes you get two ones, a two, a five and a four, and there’s nothing you can do with it, but with a complete re-roll you land a Large Straight! Sometimes, however, on just one roll, you get the perfect job or the perfect spouse, kids who seem to be on the ball, a stranger pays your way philanthropically. The point here, and what I always scrunch my face at in life, is that people tend to say, “I wasn’t given the option,” about something, or “God didn’t want me to go that way,” or something else fatalistic about a disappointment. Likewise, when something awesome happens a person may say, “I was so lucky to get this opportunity!” or, “God gave me this blessing!” and they ignore the fact that they made some pretty great decisions about the five dice they got, and the results indicate their good judgment in what to do with two fours, two fives and a one.

She doesn’t get the job after the interview, so she can: a) just quit looking and file for welfare, or b) go back to the resume site and try again.

He was a great soccer player but broke his ankle, so he can: a) end up as a gas station attendant or have an office job, or b) coach soccer or write a book about technique, or an inspiring autobiography.

Life always has options, although when your plan collapses it may not feel like it. When you’re not prepared for change, change feels pretty debilitating. But once the shock wears off and perspective widens, the options appear. Doors open even though others close.

Your second roll of three dice may add two ones and a two to your two fives, but the third roll …

#yahtzee #dice #choices #chance #decision