UIGEA: alternate comparisons and changing perspective

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Quote of the day: "If you follow every dream, you might get lost." Neil Young


I’ve thought a lot about the recent online gaming bill that passed through Congress, but many of the thoughts I have are similar to those expressed elsewhere so I thought I’d try to focus on something from a Zen perspective that might help players who are angry and are not sure how to vent this anger. These are concepts that I call “alternate comparison” and “shifting perspective.” These concepts can help you to maintain a positive outlook when something is taken away from you or when trying to accept change. Since a few people have emailed me to ask about my health situation, I’ll take my recent problems as an example.

About 14 weeks ago I had back surgery and when I awoke I couldn’t move my legs. After two days I had regained much of the movement in my left leg and there was some very minute function in my right leg. At that time, it was figured that I had suffered a type of nerve damage and that eventually I would likely regain full function of my muscles, even though it may take up to 2 years to do so.

A few days later I was transferred to a rehab center. It was a gloomy situation. The facility was not he best, as my health coverage does not pay very well. As for me, I could not get out of bed without assistance, I could not stand up, I could not even get from the bed to the wheelchair without assistance. I wasn’t even strong enough to use a walker. Heck, I couldn’t even use the bathroom by myself or wipe my own ass! It was quite a degrading situation, even for someone who has made efforts over the years to abandon his ego…I guess I still have a long way to go on that.

But I was comparing my situation to the past, my past. I had always been healthy. I was always free to walk where I wanted, to hike, play racquetball, and was a person who was able to help others when they needed a hand. But my situation had changed and I felt upset about it. My spirits were down to say the least.

It was time for some alternate comparison. So I looked around me at the rehab center. I was surrounded by mostly older patients, some who were experiencing more pain than me. Some who had little hope for recovery like I did. Some who had no money to continue medical care when they left the center. Some who were dying. Some who had given up on life.

I also thought of people I grew up with. I remembered a kid named Eric who had cerebral palsy, a condition which produced symptoms similar to mine, with the exception that I was recovering muscle function each day while he had to deal with it his entire life. I thought about wounded soldiers coming back from Iraq who may be in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives. I thought about the soldiers who came home in body bags and their families. Suddenly, my outlook had changed, simply by comparing myself to those less fortunate. I saw that I had many things to be thankful for.

The other concept, shifting perspective, helped me also. Instead of concentrating on the things I couldn’t do, I looked at the opportunities that had been presented to me. I had been given an opportunity to challenge myself. Each day became a challenge to get a little further. It started with trying transfer my body from the bed to the wheelchair. Then to try to walk on the parallel bars using a little more leg strength each day. Then the walker, bathroom, shower, etc. all became challenges that I looked forward to each day and strengthened my resolve. My solitary situation also gave me the time at night to catch up on some reading that I had wanted to do. I strengthened my relationship with my brother, as he came out to help me, including moving all my stuff to a new apartment on the first floor since I wouldn’t be able to do stairs when I got out and then talked to him every day on the phone after he left Las Vegas. And most of all, I was given the opportunity to help others in the rehab center by encouraging them and helping them to see things from a different perspective. I developed a nice relationship with one guy in particular who had a stroke named Jack and his wife Marie, and feel I was influential to Jack in his recovery.

In the end, I spent three weeks at the rehab center and made a number of friends, learned how to call numbers for the center’s bingo games, and I left there with the ability to get myself in and out of the wheelchair and walker and return home with the ability to take care of myself. With some help from home therapy, six weeks after that I began to walk again. While I still have a long way to go to have full muscle function and hope that it will happen, I have so much to be thankful for in this world and realize that even if it doesn’t happen, that cannot take away my happiness in life. So on one hand, I will do whatever is necessary to recover fully, and on the other hand, my happiness is not solely dependent upon accomplishing this goal, therefore I am once again in full control of my own situation and not concerned about things I cannot control.

So, poker players, ask yourself, how can you use these concepts of alternate comparison and shifting perspective to feel better about the current online poker situation? Or even help you in something else in your life that you are struggling with?