Kenny Rogers redux

I know I’m risking driving away whoever might be reading “Day Two” of “random Dunbar,” but if you’re going to follow my blog, you are going to have to be patient with me.  Over the next several weeks I plan on blogging about random stuff and occasionally posting poems and stories that I have written in the recent past and in the not so recent past.  But one thing you readers should know is that I am what some call a completist (if that is even a word).  When I was in seventh grade, this teacher said to me that I should never start a book and not finish it.  He said that doing so would lead to a lifetime of bad habits and incomplete jobs.  I was a rather impressionable seventh grader and since have finished just about every book I’ve ever started (including Marcel Proust’s seven volume novel Remembrance of Things Past which is substantially different from J. K. Rowling’s seven volume story, but this is fodder for a later blog).  I tell this because now I am going to return to my discussion of Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.” 

When I first decided to write about this song, I though I would only be writing about the chorus, but yesterday’s blog found me lured into the first two stanzas.  So let’s look at stanza three as a way to ease us back into the water and then hit that ever so perplexing chorus.

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.

Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.

And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.

Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

Here is that sacrifice we looked at yesterday.  The speaker freely offers payment for the advice.  It is his choice.  The gambler makes him pay not by simply finishing off the bottle, but by demanding additional payment.  Once the gambler is sure the story-teller wants the advice, the mood grow solemn, we lean in, and boom, we get no advice at all.  We get some cryptic message about playing it right.  Hey, I’m upset.  This is a coach telling the player to play better but not offering any instruction.  This is not what I, or the story-teller, want.  We want clear guidelines, a checklist to follow that will guarantee happiness, fulfillment, and success.  But like I asked you to do with my blog, I will be patient and see if there is more specific advice in the chorus.

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'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

So there really is no concrete advice.  Frustrating?  Maybe.  Or maybe it’s wisdom and that old existential notion pushing through once again.  The gambler knows that no one life is like another other than that each of us will make a series of choices that will ultimately shape the outcomes of our lives.  When to hold on to our core beliefs, our shattered loves, our investment holding, and when to cash them in and move on is such a crucial individual decision that no one can make it for us.  All the gambler can say is figure out what works for you, but take it seriously and think about it.  Strive to learn what is valuable and hold on to it and to learn when your choices are so untenable that you need to cut your losses and move on.  He cannot, should not, and will not, try to teach this skill.  Like the existential Christian, the gambler values freedom and does not want a higher power to dictate rules, even though this vagueness is clearly more difficult. 

Learning when to walk away and when to run is more of the same idea.  Again, the gambler is not instructing us on when to do this, just emphasizing that we have to figure it out for ourselves.  In fact the only somewhat concrete advice he offers is about when to count the money.  He knows that life is not over at 10 or 20 or 30….  Life is over when you die.  At that time, someone, if he cares to, can look over your existence and examine what you've earned.  The danger is in sitting back and counting our accomplishments while we are still alive.  We are not only failing to focus on the game, we are also allowing pride into life.  And as every gambler (and every baseball player for that matter) knows, life is ultimately a humbling experience.

So here are the last two stanzas.

Now Ev'ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin'

Is knowin' what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

'Cause ev'ry hand's a winner and ev'ry hand's a loser,

And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep."

So when he'd finished speakin', he turned back towards the window,

Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.

And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.

But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

The gambler reminds us that every wise person (gambler) knows that learning this skill is essential; knows that every life has potential for great success and horrible tragedy; knows that most likely we will have both; knows that in the end, the absolute best we can hope for is to die peacefully.  We cannot hope to take accomplishments and possessions to the grave.  We also, thankfully, leave our failures and moments of shame here when we leave.  No matter what, we break even.  We come into the world with nothing, and we leave with nothing.  We just hope to be at peace with this knowledge when our time comes.  And that’s the ace the story-teller found that he could keep. 

The song is full of clichés and perhaps a corny gospel-like group of back-ground singers at the end, but the lyrics are actually pretty relevant and rather existential.  Interesting that the song enjoyed such success.  Maybe we actually agree that others cannot make our choices for us.