What’s a personal mantra or philosophy you live by?
If I had to choose one philosophy to live by, it would probably be this:
We’re all dealt five cards. What matters is what we do with them.
I’ve never believed that life is entirely fair.
Some people seem to be dealt a rather lovely hand from the beginning. Good health, supportive families, opportunities, money, confidence, the right people appearing at precisely the right moment.
And some people seem to spend half their lives trying to make something out of cards that nobody would have chosen.
That’s life.
You don’t get to walk back to the dealer and say, “Excuse me, darling, I think there’s been a mistake.”
But here’s the thing I’ve learned.
We spend an awful lot of time looking at somebody else’s cards.
We see their house, their relationship, their career, their confidence, their photographs, their apparently perfect life…
And we assume they’re playing with a better hand than we are.
We don’t see the cards they’re holding underneath the table.
The grief.
The fear.
The insecurity.
The things they never talk about.
The battles they’ve fought quietly while the rest of us assumed everything was going swimmingly.
So perhaps comparing hands isn’t particularly useful.
What matters is what we do with our own.
Maybe you’ve got a pair and somebody else has a full house.
Play the pair.
Maybe you’ve been handed something you think is completely useless.
Look again.
Sometimes a card that seemed insignificant turns out to be precisely the one you needed later.
And perhaps that’s where responsibility comes in.
I can’t control every card I’m given.
I can’t choose where I start.
I can’t rewrite yesterday.
I can’t control what somebody else does with their hand.
But I can decide how I play mine.
I can choose kindness.
I can choose courage.
I can learn.
I can change direction.
I can fold when the game I’m playing is no longer worth the cost.
And occasionally, darling, I can bluff spectacularly and hope nobody notices.
But I get to play.
That’s the important part.
Life isn’t necessarily about being dealt the winning hand.
It’s about taking the hand you’ve got and asking:
“Right then. What can I make of this?”
And perhaps we should remember that when we’re looking across the table at somebody else, too.
We don’t know their cards.
So perhaps we should be a little less quick to judge how they’re playing the game.
They may be doing the absolute best they can with the hand they’ve been given.
And sometimes, if we’re lucky, we can sit down beside them rather than across the table.
Help them play a card.
Share what we’ve learned.
Or simply say:
“Come on, darling. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Because none of us chose our starting hand.
But we’re all still holding the cards.
And what we do with them…
Well, that’s rather more interesting.
Stay Fabulous,
Luce 💋
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