Poker as a Metaphor for Life

There are many well-worn and well-plumbed metaphors for life: life as (like) a mystery, a puzzle, a drama, a battle, a dream, a disease, a quest, a bubble, a voyage of discovery, and so on. While it is a commonplace that life is a gamble, this also represents a profound truth. Heidegger observes that we are ‘thrown’ into life and hit the ground running. We do not choose our genetic endowment, our parents, our historical time and place, the quality of our environment, or our material, psychological, and spiritual circumstances. And as Shakespeare reminds us, there are ‘the thousand shocks/That flesh is heir to’. Risk is the stuff of life, and even the staff of life – the food we eat – is risky. The nineteenth-century English economist and journalist Walter Bagehot urges, simply, that ‘Life is a school of probability’. Thus, life is a gamble, and so, many have supposed, gambling is a singularly appropriate pattern for understanding life.