Metaphors #2: No one knows until the River dries.

In Poker for each round each player is dealt two cards.  With the exception of the initial forced bet by the Small Blind and the Big Blind, after seeing those two cards a player may place a bet equivalent to the previous bet (check), raise a bet higher than the previous bet (raise), or retire from the round without placing any additional money into the pool (fold).

What does a participant do?  A player chooses whether to check, to raise, or to fold, based firstly on their likelihood of winning taking into account the true value of this player's two cards (Hand) at the start, and the five cards which are successively turned over (the River), secondly on their likelihood of scaring other players into thinking this player's Hand is high value, thirdly on their likelihood of sucking other players into placing higher bets thinking that the value of this player's Hand is low value but pretending to be high, and n-thly on pretending to be pretending to be.  A player's round participation will end either with a Fold, a Check, or an All In (raising to the maximum amount that player has chips for, or to the maximum amount that another player who can bet has the chips for if that amount is less).

Lots of things are like Poker in that one has a limited amount of resources (time, money, other, cf. poker chips) and must choose at certain key moments whether to invest a little more (raise), match (check) (but not really), give up and lose everything invested so far in order to be able to invest some other time (fold), reap harvest with with the added options of investing a little less (but in poker you can't reduce bets, only fold).

Lots of things are like Poker.  Do I stay and continue investing my life into this job, this dream, this woman?  Or does my hand now look so incompatible with the River now that the water level has dropped and the stones are showing [水落石出], that I should consider folding and looking for another round?  In life, there's a limited amount of rounds you can fit into the limited time you have.  Folding will often allow you additional rounds to try. That's what you can say when consoling someone who you feel is wasting their resources trying to harvest from an unproductive River.  They dream though that the River could show something near the end worth waiting for, and maybe everyone elses' hands are shitter.  No one knows until the River dries.

May the River dry early, dry often for you.