Sad Genii

There is an apocryphal story about the legendary blues musician Robert Johnson trading his soul for musical talent at a rural Mississippi crossroads. According to the story, he gave his guitar to a mysterious man who tuned it, played a few songs and then returned it and, in so doing gave Johnson his talent. Told often enough in the 70 plus years since his death, it has taken on enough truthiness to have spawned songs, books and at least one movie starring Ralph Macchio. Hoping for lightning to strike again, would-be musicians make the pilgrimage to Clarksdale—although there seems to be some uncertainty as to the precise location of this mythical intersection. (I envision scruffy, guitar-carrying hopefuls accosting strangers asking them to tune their instruments like it was open-bar night at a troubadours’ convention.)

Waiting for the devil to give you talent, or for that matter, lightning to strike, is a trap that many of us fall into and something that occupies me both personally and professionally. Making cheap jokes about musicians is just too easy, but I have to admit that I am envious of anyone who knows what they want and is prepared to pursue that goal.

At some point in our lives we each of us have had access to some sort of instrument even if it was a toddler’s color-coded xylophone. We could have worked at it and become the best color-coded xylophone players in the world, but life had other adventures in store for us: we reached the crossroads and turned the corner. Those who make the journey to Clarksdale are making a commitment to music and are hoping that music commits to them. They have bought into the inspiration-perspiration paradigm for success and, having invested the perspiration, they are hoping for transformational inspiration. Practice might get you to Carnegie Hall, but you had better have something to say once you get there.

I feel a strong kinship to this story because I feel as though I have reached my own crossroads without my instrument.

I have a hard time thinking of myself as a middle-aged man and yet as I engage in the inevitable stock-taking that comes with each turn of the calendar page, I recognize that I bear almost all of the hallmarks of the old clichés. (And if I thought I could afford a little red sports car….)

I have always tried to do what I thought was the right thing. I think I work hard and color inside the lines and yet it seems as though every year I have less and less to show for it. I want more and better for my near and dear and can hardly afford to tread water. And while I struggle with that challenging reality, I am acutely aware of those who receive vulgar rewards for doing the wrong thing and erasing the lines.

Staying the course and delaying gratification are hard-wired into my DNA but as I hurtle toward another milestone birthday I am wondering how much longer I have to delay, defer and deny. The longer I have to wait, the angrier I am getting.

My brother is just on the other side of a milestone birthday and he is every bit as impatient, just as angry and just as uncertain about how to change his fortunes. Which corner do we turn and, perhaps most paralyzingly, what if it’s the wrong one?

We want to take control of our lives, but aren’t certain how to do it.

Much to my wife’s dismay, I watch a lot of televised poker. I am just old enough to fall between the poker booms. When I was growing up nobody I knew played cards, let alone gambled. When Texas Hold ‘em exploded a couple of years ago suddenly everyone was playing.

What is fascinating to me is that players make decisions based on the bare minimum of information and are prepared to back up those choices with some or all of their chips. They can even go “all-in” at any point putting all of their chips into the pot.

I don’t know how people can do that. Sure it’s a game and the sun will still come out tomorrow even if you lose, but still….

To be confident enough to risk all your chips on the turn of a card…, what must that be like?

My parents were born during the Great Depression—the last one—and they had a real respect for risk: it was to be avoided. And if it couldn’t be avoided it had to be managed. As a result, I have a real appreciation for the Law of Gravity and I know all about falling: people fall out, they fall off, they fall down and they fall short. If you are to stay safe then you have to stay on the sidelines.

To play poker at the highest levels is to have enough respect for risk to know when to ignore it.

In Texas Hold ‘Em, the worst starting hand is a seven and a two. With those two cards, the odds of having the winning hand are the longest compared to any other combination. This is one of the first things you learn about the game and yet there are players who will regularly play and win with that hand.

To paraphrase the philosopher Kenny Rogers: you do have to know when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em and when to go all-in. Folding I have down to a science; it’s holding and going all-in that I have no skills at.

So, why don’t I play more poker? That would be way too risky.

Part of what makes Texas Hold ‘Em work on TV is that the structure of the game is finite. Like life, Hold ‘Em ends. Two players in each hand are obliged to make forced bets—the big and small blinds—in order to start the pot. At regular intervals during the game the size of those bets goes up. This keeps people like me from staying at the table and not risking anything. You can’t help but get in the game. And if they don’t actually play a hand, just put in their blinds and fold their cards, sooner or later they will be “blinded out”. The cost of these forced bets will consume all of their chips. This too is most life-like.

As we have been talking about this over the last month, what I have come to realize is that my brother and I share this emerging sense that we are being blinded out of our lives.

He asked me the other night whether I thought there was such a thing as a “sad gene”. He asked me via text message and I misread it thinking he had typed “sad genii.” Was there some foundational reason why we can’t get to where we want to be? Did we reach our crossroads only to meet the Sad Genii?

The answer to this question is yes and no. We know that depression is part nature and part nurture. Like poker it’s partly the cards you’re dealt and partly the skill with which you play them. But we know too that skilled players can win with lousy cards.

Almost as powerful as our respect for risk is our sense of regret. We know too much about the bad choices we made and the roads not taken. I know in my own case that I have tried for too long to not add to my personal regret chip stack and now, perversely, it is the fear of getting to the end of my life and having too much that is spurring me forward to take more risk.

Robert Johnson got his musical gift from a mysterious stranger he met at a crossroads. In our own ways, my brother and I have each come to our own crossroads and met ourselves which I think may prove to be just as great a gift.

Time to shuffle up and deal.

--Graham Campbell,
Associate Director