THE DEAL-OR-NO-DEAL METAPHOR

This is not my friend.

A friend of mine just got back from filming Deal or No Deal. He's not allowed to say how he got on until August the 4th, so I made sure I asked him all the other questions I could think of.

If you've not seen it, the show is a hyped-up mix of luck, calculated gambling, psychology and cheesy superstition. A suspiciously enthusiastic audience cheers on a plucky contestant who sits in a furniture warehouse deciding how to open 21 cardboard boxes (each containing various amounts of money - from loose change to a small fortune) in turn. The contestant hopes that his or her own sealed box has a greater amount in it (though randomly selected) than all the others. Meanwhile, at the end of a glowing telephone, the antagonist, an invisible 'banker' attempts to buy that box from our chosen hero at various points, offering a perfectly-poised amount, based on which boxes have already been eliminated. Deal or no Deal. Narrating it all and ramping up the dramatic tension like a flowery storyteller is a bearded gnome who flips between compassion and derision as though directed by the enchanted voices in his head.

I don't make a habit of watching it. However, I was intrigued by my friend's experience. I asked him whether he spoke to the banker, what the other contenstants were like, what you get under the little shelf when it's your turn to open the boxes, how many awful shirts the gnome got through in a filming day, and whether the set was smaller in real-life than it looks on the telly.

"It's kind of... 3d..." he said.
"What, as opposed to seeing it on a screen?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Yeah! Exactly!" he replied, enthusiastically.

I think the format fits well into the subconscious reality of a lot of people every tea-time. Here's how it works:

Opportunity spreads before you, vast and unknown. You choose what you want to do - you might end up trading your awful one-penny situation for thousands of pounds; you might just jump at the wrong moment and lose it all. There are supporters and detractors - people who urge you to cling on to what you've got, others who think you should let it all go and shoot for the moon. There are antagonists, willing to flirt with you, to wine and dine you and to offer you a calculated risk that minimises risk and maximises their own gain when it suits them. There are turncoat narrators who are with you all the way to the mountain top, but turn and laugh when you topple.

You can see how it appeals, this show. It's a microcosm of something unspoken that all of us kind of know about.

What occurred to me though, while I was thinking about it, is that there's something critical about that most pivotal factor of all: the contents of your own box. In the world of Deal or No Deal, this number is the most important number, defining the course of your game and dictating the outcome by its sheer unknowability. It's selected for you, like the great hand of fate plucking it at random. Right until the last minute, this number remains unknown by everyone, especially yourself, until the big-reveal turns you into a champion or a fool.

Well that's not like life at all is it? You can know your number, you can find out your value, your worth, your hand, your bargaining power. What's more you can change it if you want to. You can grow it, learn new skills, develop yourself and give yourself far more opportunity than you knew was possible. As a Christian, I reckon I know the best way to do this - go straight to the Box-Maker, but you can at least figure some of it out! You don't have to tell the world what you've got either, but you can find out for yourself and seek to become the best version of you that you can be!

That I think, is how you win Deal or No Deal, or perhaps Life or No Life, in the real world outside the 2d-telly-warehouse.

It turns out that my friend got chosen for the show in the first place, because he very sensibly told them that he wanted to invest any money he won, putting it towards a business and a deposit for a house. Most people his age would be less grown-up about it.