{"id":382577,"date":"2022-12-30T06:06:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T20:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=382577"},"modified":"2022-12-30T06:06:26","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T20:06:26","slug":"all-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/all-in\/","title":{"rendered":"All in"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Jim Rayphand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My card-playing friends tell me (or rather insist) that poker is a game of skill, not luck. I have heard it said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got to know when to hold \u2018em, know when to fold \u2018em, know when to walk away, [and] know when to run.\u201d1 I don\u2019t doubt them; in fact, I\u2019ll double down and say that life too is a game of skill though I can\u2019t rule out luck.<\/p>\n

While I don\u2019t often play poker, I have \u201cmade a life of reading people\u2019s faces [and] knowing what the cards were by the way they held their eyes.\u201d2 I have yet to place a bet that I didn\u2019t win and\/or lose, it\u2019s that simple and that complicated\u2014\u201cevery hand\u2019s a winner and every hand\u2019s a loser.\u201d3<\/p>\n

I have come to realize, to my dismay (if not astonishment), that I gamble with my life every day; should have played my last hand long ago and \u201cthere but for the grace of God go I.\u201d That sounds dramatic, I know, but it\u2019s not exaggerated. The truth is that in life, all of us are all in all the time\u2014it\u2019s just that some are better than others at calling the bluffs on a fine line between fear (the dread in belief that someone or something is dangerous and will likely cause pain) and hope (the confident expectation of something better to come\u2014some call that faith).<\/p>\n

For me, there are perhaps no better illustrations of \u201cgoing all in\u201d than the push and pull of a recent love-interest and the headfirst dive into commercial fishing (on a very small scale) as a profession\u2014somewhat redundant in the fishing nature on both fronts so-to-speak at the wholesale price or rather cost of my body, mind, heart, and soul. On the first front, \u201cOur time here is limited and I give it all to you. Through the stars on a moonless night\u2014hear the whispers it brings\u2014I\u2019m the guide by your side.\u201d4<\/p>\n

As for the latter, at the battered age of 50 years old, very much worse for the wear, I walked away from a secure, long-time career of 20-plus years to pursue a childhood dream of wanting \u201cto be a fisherman when I grow up.\u201d Riddled with debt and head just above water, I took my life\u2019s savings, ignored the debt, and bet it all on the ocean around us in arguably the most ill-advised financial gamble ever made and yet one of my proudest endeavors to date. \u201cNot all that glitters is gold\u201d; in fact, not much glitters more than my handcrafted lures and the fish coming aboard my boat in chase.<\/p>\n

Being a fisherman today is a far cry from what I imagined or wanted to be as a child. For one thing, I aspired to be like some of my uncles who crafted their own one or two-man wooden canoes and sailed or paddled themselves to and from their fishing grounds. Most of their fishing was done swimming with the fishes, free-diving and spearing for catch. My version today is done trolling from the comforts of bigger fiberglass boats with high-powered engines completely reliant on fossil fuels\/petroleum en route to and from my fishing grounds much, much further offshore than I could have ever imagined. Some days I find myself fearing for my life in turbulent, towering waves all around me and other days I am inspired with awe at the beauty and tranquility on an ocean of glass with no land in sight\u2014always in search of my elusive white whale. I find peace in the solitude.<\/p>\n

For a little over a year now I have found myself in rough waters (both literally and figuratively) with the mind and heart in constant battle over doing what I need to do (doing what\u2019s right, if you will) versus doing what I want to do\u2014the line is blurry from the view through my salted eyes and motion of the ocean.<\/p>\n

I suspect there are many more life lessons to be deemed from my fishing ventures (whether in the sea or on land) than my limited brain and hopeless heart can ascertain. More than likely my journey will present textbook cases of what not to do (and how we can learn from mistakes), but from somewhere in the darkness from many of life\u2019s storms I found some aces that I keep (in the words of people far more wise than I ever could be):<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cNo storm, not even the one in your life, can last forever\u201d (Unknown);<\/p>\n

\u2022 “Every storm runs out of rain, just like every dark night turns into day” (Unknown);<\/p>\n

\u2022 “When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain” (Unknown);<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cWe can only learn to love by loving\u201d (Unknown);<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cAnd above all things have fervent love for one another, for \u201clove will cover a multitude of sins\u201d (1 Peter 4:8)<\/p>\n

Some people love to fish, others fish for love, but the luckiest among us simply fish with love\u2026come what may.<\/p>\n

1 Kenny Rogers\u2019 song, The Gambler
\n2 Kenny Rogers\u2019 song, The Gambler
\n3 Kenny Rogers\u2019 song, The Gambler
\n4 Ben Rayphand\u2019s Time Limited<\/p>\n

***
\nJim Rayphand is a former executive director of the Northern Marianas Protection and Advocacy Systems Inc. and recently ventured into a startup fishing business.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My card-playing friends tell me (or rather insist) that poker is a game of skill,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":327594,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[56,15113],"class_list":["post-382577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-business-3","tag-jim-rayphand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}