How You Play the Game is What Matters
If everybody in the world were given one million dollars, would he or she
be rich tomorrow? In my opinion, there would be the few who are rich, but several who
end up broke. It would be because they don’t know how to manage their money. I
believe that Josh Billings quote, “Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing
those you hold well,” means that anything one possesses is not useful unless one knows
how to use it correctly. For instance, if a farmer bought an enormous amount of land, but
didn’t know how to make the best use out of the land he bought, then he wasted his
money. He had this huge amount of land to take advantage of, but he didn’t know the
best way to go about the situation. It does not just apply for money, but also for
occupations, objects, power, and for many more factors in life.
One of my friends’ dads received a promotion to manager of his corporation
this month. He was an extremely lucky individual to get this position, but he didn’t do
his job well. He got to caught up in the fact that he was manager that he didn’t put
enough effort into it, which led him to get fired. He ended up in a worse position than he
was before the promotion. Life throws so many outstanding opportunities out, but few
people know exactly what to do with them.
There are numerous things that I buy or that are given to me all of the time
that I don’t know how to use well. When I got my first phone, I didn’t know
how to take care of it or use it properly. It ended up getting broken within two
weeks. I got something that was worth a lot, but then I didn’t think about how to
correctly take care of it before hand, and I ended up with nothing in the end. There
is always a way to correctly do something and to do it well.
Power has major effects on an individual. Power is power in itself. When one
individual contains so much power, like Adolf Hitler, it takes over the way they think.
Hitler began to see what he could do in his position, but he started to use it in a negative
way. He had a humungous amount of control over thousands of people, and he didn’t use
it well. There are several instances when one person gets in a position of authority and
doesn’t know how to use it for the betterment of the world.
Billings’ quote has made me truly think about how I am using things. Am I
managing my money wisely? Am I using my possessions well? Am I using my authority
to positively affect my peers? All of these questions come into play when I try to analyze
the quote. It leaves me wondering about all of the things that could be different in my
life.