I have a conditioned view of gambling. I am used to seeing it as a horrible thing. Everyday I hear about people who gamble and ruin their lives. Everything is lost. From her prison cell, a woman says that she used to rob banks to fund her addiction. She can’t help but feel guilty. She couldn’t help but to get involved. She wanted to be taken into custody. Despair.
I have been thinking about how to gamble differently over the past few months. It’s not “pure gambling”, such as online gambling, casinos, and lottery tickets. Gambling is an essential part of healthy, hopeful living.
My partner and me are starting a business. This is a risky venture. It will take our time and our lives. This site is also being built by me – Elsa’s Creative Emporium. Another big gamble with creativity, time, and energy. Columbus set sail for America. His wager was that he would land in the Far East. Although he didn’t achieve what he wanted, the gamble paid off for him and the Europeans.
Farmers plant seeds. The bet: the season will be great. Designers design The risk: That the design will be accepted by the market.
People fall for each other,and decide that they want to live together – it’s one of the most risky things in life.
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Many people prefer a steady income. Please, no gambling. You can do so and so many times an hour. Anything else feels dangerous, out of control, and wrong. They shudder and recoil, how can they live like this?
One observation. People don’t want their work time to be gambled with. They desire steady, reliable income. They also have an intense urge to gamble, sometimes overwhelming, and want a steady, dependable income.
This means that many people who desire a steady income spend large amounts of their daily earnings on gambling.
It’s for fun. It’s my right. “I have the right to do with my money what I please.” It was mine, after all. It’s mine.” Everyone has the right to have fun every once in a while. All the hours I work. I deserve something.
Even though many people don’t want to work “on a gambling” (building businesses, creating creative projects that may never pay), many gamble in ways that will make the vast majority of people lose.
Most people live on a “gamble”, or taking as many chances as possible. For example, traditional gatherer-hunting societies have the relative reliability of gathering (which produces about 90% of the world’s food) and the chance to win through hunting (10% of the country’s average food supply). Every year is different, even when it comes to the gathering. You will get a steady, reliable pay-off (salary and berries, etc.). This is not the norm.
We’re back to gambling. is the type of gambling I am used to avoiding. In other words, one doesn’t try to make a sale, build a website or business, and one doesn’t hope that another person will respond. Pure gambling includes casinos, lotteries and slot machines. The goal is to win in a game that is against you. A win does not build anything except the win. Nothing is ever written, nothing is harvested, and nothing is built.
The pleasure of winning in everyday gambling, which I will call “part of-life gambling”, is part of many other things. It is part of building a life.
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All other things are removed from “pure gambling”. The win is the goal. The payoff is the goal. Some forms of “pure gambling” do allow one to develop some skills. One learns how to play bingo well and the intricacies of computer games. One learns to be fast and the moves become automatic. People can also gamble in other forms, such as pulling the arm of a one-armed bandit. The desire to continue doing this is so strong that some people resort to using diapers to avoid having to leave the house to use the toilet.
I have felt the pull of both pure and part-of-life betting. It was about ten years ago. Too much stress. One day I decided to play minesweeper, which is a computer game. I felt relieved. I found myself playing minesweeper for several more days. My skills kept improving. It was so relaxing and enjoyable. Minesweeper was my favorite game. It was a matter luck from that point onwards, whether you win or lose (mostly losing). Yet, I wanted to continue playing. It was very much so.
I did what was the easiest: I asked my partner for help in removing the game from my computer. At the time, I didn’t know how to delete it. However, I don’t believe I could have used my computer without playing. It was almost impossible not to pull. When the game ended, I felt empty. It was my wish to have it back. It wasn’t my wish to have it back. I had that much control over the pull of my game.
For a long time, I played solitaire, not on the computer. Too dangerous. It’s the old-fashioned way with cards. If I was playing more than I felt was appropriate, I would place the cards where it was most convenient for me to reach them, such as in a basement corner. Sometimes I would take them with me. I would rather not.
These past years have been too busy to make time for playing cards. The urge to reach for the cards has disappeared, I have noticed. If I have the time, I’d like to go for a walk, make dinner, or do nothing. That’s how I prefer life.
These past few years I have been very gambling, but it has been a healthy way to do things. Planning, doing things and hoping that the projects will succeed.
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I’m back gambling: The good, the poor, and the ugly.
The best. These are the times when we gamble in life. We should have as much experience and knowledge as possible. It’s crucial to understand the risks and minimize them. Because in every day life, just like in a casino one can lose one’s savings, one’s home, etc. 15 years ago, I gambled: I had a job as a flight attendant that was reliable but not satisfying. When the airline went bankrupt, I was just finishing my Ph.D. and offered a handshake to anyone who wanted to leave. I didn’t have any full-time university or college teaching jobs. Worse, I didn’t have any teaching opportunities at all where I lived. But I gambled. I was almost done with my Ph.D. and had been teaching university part-time for many years.
It wasn’t an easy win. However, I was able to get college teaching and eventually college teaching. This isn’t a quick fix like a win at the casino. This means that you have to put in the effort to make your classes successful and learn how to make them work for you (when possible). There are always challenges.
Crick and Watson are two of my favorite people. They worked for 10 years to figure out DNA’s structure and then, through a dream, realized that there was a second helix. They gambled for 10 years.
Banting is the person I think about, because he discovered how insulin can control diabetes. It took so much effort and time, despite not being successful.
The danger. This is what I am referring to people who my parents knew. They were not gamblers. Their steady, paid-per-hour work had made them financially successful. Their 20-year old son saw a golden business opportunity. A successful local business was up for sale. To buy the house, the parents took out a mortgage on their home. The successful business collapsed within a year due to a series of poor decisions made by their son, who was inexperienced and had many ideas about “improving” it. Everything was lost for the parents.
The good. Pure gambling when it’s more that an occasional pleasure. My mother used to buy an Irish Sweepstakes tickets back when gambling was legal in Canada. It was a thrilling experience to do something illegal. The ticket was also a miracle cure for all her financial woes. It was worth the small price.
The cost of gambling is too high for many people – both financially and in terms of time and focus. Over 15% of Canadian teens have a mild addiction to what I refer to as bad gambling.
It can provide some gratification for people who live boring lives. Every week, bingo halls are a magnet for thousands of people.
The most horrific. When the gambling urge overtakes a person’s life and destroys all other aspects of that life. Other interests, parenthood, couple life.
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What should you do? Recognize the power of the “gambling payout pull”. It’s there, the jackpot. It’s hard to resist.
Countries and societies that outlaw gambling, like Canada and the States did in the past, recognize the destructive power inherent in pure gambling.
Personally, I think it is insane to remove gambling laws without mandating massive public education, starting in childhood, on the destructive effects of “the gambling payoff pull.”
It’s almost like saying that we no longer ensure that water is safe to drink, but that we don’t do anything to help people take care of their water supplies. Imagine a massive campaign against drinking water based on the belief that it interferes with individual liberty. Each person has the right of choosing the water they want.
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Yet, we must return to good gambling. It is now called “integrated gambling”, which means that it includes gambling in other activities. This intense pay-off pull can help us through difficult times. When we practice difficult pieces of guitar, we know that there will be a reward and the thrill of reaching the goal (at least for a brief moment) before moving on to the next challenge. It is a long-term commitment to work with children with learning disabilities. We are happy when they learn. Pay-off.
Good gambling. It’s an essential part of human development. It keeps us going. We’re not just doing what it takes (trying keep the corps alive during a difficult season), but also longing for the reward. It’s a natural high when it happens. Yeah!! !
Gambling is a combination of creativity and good gambling. It allows us to move beyond ruts and into the unknown. This is the right direction. Deep within us, there is a pull.
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It’s easy for us to make mistakes.
Gambling works. Gambling when combined with a project, an end, that doesn’t have to do gambling, is a goal that often leads to further development.
Gambling is a bad thing. Gambling to get the win and the reward – often unrelated to our efforts. My mother didn’t do anything that would have made her more likely than anyone else to win the Irish Sweepstakes. It was luck. She never won.
Gambling – The gruesome act of gambling where someone has become addicted to “pure” gambling.
It takes a small change in ourselves to move from the good to bad to the gruesome to the constructive – a disconnect of the payoff pull from something positive.
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I began with lyrics from a song that I had written years ago. It was about a gamble Western society places a lot of value on: love. It is expected that young people will find a partner with whom to share their lives, which can be a big gamble. It’s a central healthy gamble. It’s clear that learning is essential. Healthy relationships with loved ones are more likely to pay off the love wager.
We need to be able to gamble correctly – to choose the right type and to win.
