The Casino

So I've been watching the reality show The Casino, which is about the Las Vegas casino The Golden Nugget. One of the current storylines in the last couple of episodes is about a couple who wants to get married at the casino but is having some financial difficulties. Case in point, the running total cost for their wedding is at $113, 000 and they had only budgeted for something like $42, 000. Hellooo-oo?!? Perhaps they need to think about scaling back a bit. But no. Instead the groom-to-be decided to try and win some money to finance this wedding el grande. Instead, he lost $25,000. In 2 bets. Then he makes a comment which triggered a memory of a sermon I heard not too long ago. He says, "I don't know how I got here." In other words, I don't know how I ended up on the verge of a massive wedding with no cash to pay for it. To anyone watching the show, it seems pretty obvious how he got there.

The sermon I heard was about the paths we choose in life, and how the destination of a particular path is always the same. In the same way that a physical road will always end up in the same place, the paths we choose in life all have pre-determined outcomes. I always follow the same streets when I go to work, and in 6 years, they have never taken me anywhere but my place of employment. In the same way, if you choose a path of physical fitness, you will end up healthier than the person who chooses to eat bonbons and watch tv all day. Or if you choose the path of compulsive gambling, (some might argue that if people are addicted to something, they're not really choosing it, but that's a whole other blog), then at some point you will lose a lot of money. Probably when you can least afford it. The point of the sermon was to wake us up and make us realize that the path we're on will not lead to any destination other than where it's always led. And hopefully, if we sit back and figure out what paths we're on and make any necessary adjustments, we won't end up saying "I don't know how I got here."