El Mundo

When we did our activity yesterday in class about "que adquiere la palabra "el mundo" en la novela," I couldn't help but relating this to my life. I am a big poker player, and the fact that this story is in Millas' world, from only his perspective, made me think of playing a Texas Hold'em Tournament. You sit there and play, knowing and only seeing your own cards, just as we only know our own mentality. Meanwhile, other players have cards of their own, just as other people have their own mentalities in life. During each individual hand, you try to read what other people are holding, just as we try to read what other people are thinking in real life, and you formulate a hypothesis on what cards they have and play accordingly, just as we judge/guess what other people are thinking about us and we act accordingly. Winning a hand signifies knowing how another person's thought process works, as in making some sort of connection with that person because you can read into their mind. Losing means you can't read that person, and in real life this signifies a misunderstanding between the two people.

You could just look at the results of every hand and not go through the mental game, just as you can just look at the actions of people without knowing their thought process. However, in poker, people can make good plays and lose or make bad plays and win, because there is luck involved, just as people in real life can have good thoughts/intentions but do bad things or have bad thoughts/intentions and do good things. In other words, you can't solely judge a person on the results of each hand, or in real life people's actions, because, although over the long haul "actions speak louder than words," in the short term good poker players can make bad decisions or get unlucky and bad poker players can make good decisions or get lucky, just as good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. This is why the thought process of a person is important, because although in the end it matters about the action more than the thoughts, the thoughts are the bridge between you and your actions.