The Gambler
The distance between losing everything and having nothing left to lose is infinite. Nothing left to lose is an altitude of freedom that lives without restraint, however so few of us can testify to it. Having experienced some loss we cling to what we have, and from this clinging stems our greatest fears and our greatest weakness. Being afraid to lose something, we do not risk anything. And, perhaps, the only way to not be afraid is to no longer possess something that can be lost.
This movie reminds me of a time when I would take notes in the theater, frantically and successfully writing in the dark; like how I used to read a great author or sit in class and absorb my professor’s words, unable to do so without marking every inspiring phrase, every spark of wisdom. Well, this one I got from IMDB:
I see things in terms of victory or death, and not just victory but total victory. It’s either victory or don’t bother. You’re born as a man, with the nerves of a soldier, the apprehension of an angel, to lift a phrase (from Shakespeare), but there’s no use for it. You’re set up to be a philosopher or a king or Shakespeare, and this is all they give you? Twenty-odd years of school which is all instruction in how to be ordinary. . .and then it’s a career, which is not the same thing as existence (Mark Wahlberg: The Gambler).
Sometimes, I am jealous of that girl from my past. Like she was closer to that victory, hanging onto the truth in every sound bite, squeezing the beauty out of every page, and trying to leave a little something beautiful behind in a notebook, using the bit of wisdom she found to conjure up her own. I think she had less to lose, and the older I get the more reasons I have to be afraid. Now, I risk nothing and have grown too comfortable. I muddle through, satisfied with the stupid pleasures and lose any sense of purpose and identity under the fog of routine tooth-brushing and mundane traffic-patterns. The quest for Truth and Beauty is replaced with clichés and a war against carbohydrates. Movies merely allow the drug of escape to crash a wave over my face, books serve as domiciles for dust mites, teachers are replaced with a large debt I chip at once a month, and all writing is confined to a screen that mostly checks emails and predicts the weather.
In the opposite realm, Wahlberg’s character — a long way from The Funky bunch — settles into an existential conversation that there’s no point to life, to death, to this moment or the next, if he’s not truly being; which for him means to fulfill his unique, individual potential completely. Get busy livin or get busy dyin. Carpe Diem. To Be Or Not To Be. Whether it’s Morgan Freeman, Robin Williams, or Shakespeare who delivers it, this is not a new sentiment. Our ears have carried this nugget of wisdom to our brains many times before. But The Gambler offers something else: we are created with great potential, but the world in which we live keeps us from it; and even if we do achieve this great feat of becoming, the world offers us nothing in response — or worse, indifference. Wahlberg is the sad philosopher: holding this well-known romantic truth in one hand — to merely exist is to be dead already — and the cynical truth in the other — What’s the fucking point of it all? He realizes that he has to separate himself from the world’s standards of value and revert back to a true standard, the only standard — an objective good, independently true regardless of the world’s definition — and to do so he must lose everything of the world that he possesses. It’s a very Biblical notion. It shouldn’t surprise you, then, to know that Dostoevsky wrote the short story which inspired the movie. He often — as shown through his characters — struggled to reconcile man’s great potential with his inability to realize it and live life to the fullest. Dostoevsky is often broken by it and even writes The Gambler in response to his own gambling addictions. In the movie, philosophy of losing everything — in order to have nothing left to lose — becomes not just Wahlberg’s mission, but his addiction. I think it’s Dostoevsky’s attempt to find redemption in his own flawed nature — and he himself may have found a type of salvation in gambling away all of his worldly possessions.
Remember the parable of Jesus where three guys are given three different amounts of money, entrusted with their master’s wealth (Matthew 25:14-30). Who was given how much is incidental and arbitrary — as Wahlberg reminds us — and yet this is the foundation for my life, my judgments of others, my own personal aspirations. Just as the men are given the amount that corresponds with their abilities, their God-given talents, I am given gifts freely, born into a specific world I never chose, offered unique opportunities I never earned; and I waste myself away, wanting to be someone who was given something different — a different brain, different circumstances — someone who is not me exactly. We think that who we are and what we are given, what we are able to accomplish, is never enough. Instead, according to the parable, the only thing that matters is what each man does with what he has; since what we have is exactly right for our body and our mind and our place and our time and who God has created us to be and to become. And we have to believe that that is something inherently good – independent of the world’s standards. Two of the three men in the parable take risks with what they’ve been entrusted, the third is so afraid of losing anything he does nothing with what he’s been given. But the risk-takers, “the gamblers,” are blessed by God.
Wahlberg’s addiction is not far from these men who risk it all. The “forces of the universe” — never called God in Hollywood — created him with potential, and he’s willing to give up everything the world has offered him in order to realize that potential. Finally, the moment is forced to its crisis — to lift a phrase from T.S. Eliot. He believes that it is not necessarily the case that the universe will find him worthy of life, worthy of greatness beyond what he’s been living; and he may not win by the world’s standards. Instead he believes that whatever the universe does decide, whatever circumstances he is left with, at least who he has allowed himself to become will be true. We can learn something from this perspective of faith. We’ll never realize our unique potential for true greatness unless, until, we are willing to risk everything that can be lost, realizing that none of that ultimately matters. If I am willing to give up everything that can be lost, I don’t know who I will be. But if I hang onto everything, I am certain I will lose my soul.
The young man said to Jesus, “All these things I have done; what am I still lacking?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be COMPLETE, go and sell everything you have and give it to the poor… But when the young man heard this, he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much (Matthew 19:20-22).
If you cling to your life, you will lose it, and if you let your life go, you will save it (Luke 17:33).
