When I was a young boy, my siblings and I would sit down and play The Game of Life®.
How naive it was of me to think that life in and of itself would not also turn out to be a game.
At first glance, the board game and actual life has a lot of similarities. You go to college or maybe you enter straight into the workforce. Then comes a career, a family, and eventually, in an ideal world, retirement.
In fact, if you look at the layout of the game board, you may notice something interesting. Nothing seems unique at first glance, but there is a shocking bit of symbolism in the way that the course one takes in the game is full of twists and turns, which helps to represent the twists and turns taken by people in the real world as their life unfolds.
Of course, that’s where similarities stop, as the real game of life is far more complex than can ever be expressed with just a game board and a spinner.
In the board game, it’s very clear how to win. Whoever has the most money at the end of the game wins.
Real life doesn’t quite work out that way. In all honesty, there is no set path a person can take to “win” the real thing.
Whoever has the most money at the end of it all isn’t guaranteed to win. They could turn out to be the biggest loser. The poorest could even defy the odds and “win” the whole thing. Then again, when it comes to life, winning and losing are very subjective terms.
A game is defined as a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one, played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck. Nowhere does it say there has to be a set winner or loser, and that is where the real world can be applied to this definition.
The world is a competitive place. There are rules on top of rules on top of even more rules. Who comes out on top is definitely decided on by a combination of skill and strength. And of course, luck is the single most important factor in it.
In a game, people do whatever it takes to get ahead of their fellow competitors. And that’s no different in real life.
Have you ever had someone take advantage of you, whether it be romantically, professionally, or personally? I have and it certainly wasn’t a move made to benefit me. The same cannot be said for the people on the other side of those moves.
But these misfortunes occur in a board game as well as in life, which is why it’s best to have a strategy.
In fact, people in the real world typically have a strategy, and like with a board game, that strategy varies heavily from person to person.
In the end, whether that strategy works is ultimately up to you. There will be countless obstacles in the game of life, just like there were all those years back playing The Game of Life®.
It’s up to you to form a plan to ultimately come out of this twisted, amazing and wildly messed up game with a “win.” And it’s not going to be easy.
But, just like in any other game, if you can adapt and overcome, you may just surprise everyone, even yourself, when it’s all said and done.