How Grandpa’s Wisdom Changed My View on Risk

I don’t know how true the story is.

But Grandpa was a gambler. With a family to raise and money tight, he’d often get into a poker game to raise money for lunch and groceries.

Or so goes the story.

But the point is he was willing to take a risk with no guarantee that it would work out.

My people were very “risk adverse.” Maybe the lesson of a desperate gamble was always in their minds, and the idea scared them. If it wasn’t a guaranteed win, they didn’t try. they wouldn’t step out of their comfort zone and risk the impossible.

But I remember talking with my grandpa, and he said something that has always hung with me. “You play every card. And if you keep playing them, you’ll win eventually.”

Maybe that’s the difference between me and my parents. I’ll roll the dice in an impossible situation where they wouldn’t.

There’s one other thing Grandpa told me. “If you intend to win, you have to run the risk of losing. And losing stinks, but it happens. But you’ll never win unless you sit down at the table knowing you could lose. And if you can’t accept that, maybe you don’t belong in the game after all.”

Grandpa wasn’t talking about just cards. He was talking about life.

Sometimes you have to lay the cards on the table and hope and pray they come up perfectly.

But you’ll never know till you do so.