"Playing the Cards You Have...For the Future...For People

“Playing the Cards You Have…For the Future…For People” Sheila Jackson Lee was a Congresswoman who served in Houston for 30 years, from 1995 until her death in July 2024. I came to know her over the years through our joint association with Yale. I admired her enormously. How could I not? Sheila Jackson Lee’s life was celebrated with a glorious memorial service held at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Numerous luminaries spoke, including former President Bill Clinton. President Clinton delivered a memorable eulogy to Ms. Lee. It included a number of stirring stories, but there were two which I will never forget. Clinton recalled that when he was in the White House in the mid-1990s, he had what was called a “just say yes” list. On this list were only a handful of people who were so persistent and persuasive in their points of view, he came to believe “he might just as well say yes now” because you knew you would eventually. On this list, Clinton recounted, were long-term political leaders that you would expect, including Nancy Pelosi and Senator Ted Kennedy. Also on the list, surprisingly, I’m sure to many, was this Freshman Congresswoman, Sheila Jackson Lee. She earned the reputation even before she was a Congresswoman and, quickly when she became one, that she would persist in advocating what she thought was right, again and again. The second memory Clinton shared of Ms. Lee is one, which even more I will remember forever. He said quite simply: No matter what the situation, right up to the time of her passing, “Sheila Jackson Lee played the cards she had. She played them for the future,” Clinton remarked with passion and, I would add, “she played them for people.” I can’t overemphasize the importance I attach to this call to “play the cards you have, play for them for the future and, yes, play them for people.” Doing that at every stage of our life, including when we are most challenged, perhaps especially when we are challenged, is vital. Think of this metaphor. You are playing poker. You get seven cards. Two or three of them are great. Two mediocre. And two are, plain and simple, terrible. But this is your hand. There is no point in lamenting or grousing about it. You have to play it as best as you humanly can and, yes, play it for the future and play it for people. I can relate to this mantra “play the cards you have” to every phase of my life. There were times during my career at Procter & Gamble when I was faced with circumstances that I can only describe as having some “pretty bad cards.” But I knew I needed to make the most of them myself and with others. When I had cancer in 2005, and I was given a 50/50 chance to survive for five years, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind: I was going to play the cards I had, and I was going to play them for the future, and I did. I know that attitude helped me survive. I think of my wife, Francie, now battling cancer. She’s been doing it for four years. Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. She is certainly playing the cards she has, heroically, with the most positive spirit imaginable. Earlier, during my long association with the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, I can remember the day when an advisor came into the room to tell us they had badly overestimated attendance and the need for us to raise money had almost tripled. This was an ugly hand. But I and all of us knew that the Freedom Center was vital; that we needed to make it survive; that we needed to play the cards we had. “Playing the cards you have” calls for imagination, calls for persistence, and calls for partners who can help win the hand. It is not a passive, “let’s see how it develops” frame of mind. It is an assertive vision “we are going to make the most of this situation” frame of mind. I think of the heroes that I admire most. Winston Churchill in 1941-1942. As he became Prime Minister, he was inheriting a really bad hand. Germans were marching through North Africa. Japan was capturing almost all of Southeast Asia. There was incessant bombing in London. But he took the hand he had, and he made the most of it. He rallied the British people. He strategically saw he needed to bring the United States into the war and that became his top priority. That was the “future” he was intended to achieve, and he was playing his hand, yes, for the “people.” The citizens of the United Kingdom, whom he rallied. Yes, “play the hand you have. Play it for the future. Play it for people.” The story Bill Clinton told about Sheila Jackson Lee will forever motivate me. Perhaps the story will also motivate you.