The Game of Life

When Milton Bradley created this child's board game, I wonder if he realized what he was really doing. The game of LIFE. It takes you on a one way journey from youth to retirement. As it would seem the game hits all the "big events" in life: getting a job, marriage, buying a home, children, etc. He must have been a very smart man to be able to compile an entire life complete with picnics, and car troubles. And just like the human life every time you play you find yourself being a different person and each with different events. Each life different. And yet if you look further into it, each life is remarkably the same. Every life must STOP and be married. Every life must STOP and get a job, buy a house. Eventually every life must STOP and retire. Every life seems to live from pay day to pay day enjoying simple pleasures life brings along the way. Yes, Mr. Bradley created a great children's game that has entertained the masses since 1860, and kudos to him for doing it. But I believe he has done a great injustice to what we call LIFE. However, even though the game is an injustice to what life really is, he has managed to make a fairly realistic summary and put it in a box so that you and I could grow up making light of the events of adulthood.

First off his game enters a life at 18 and has nothing to say about what this person has experienced during those precious and vital years. I myself am approaching this age and it confuses me to think that my whole life so far has meant nothing to this game of life. Has nothing I've gone through; the pain and joys of these years been significant enough to even be mentioned when summing up life as a whole? I can not agree with Milton's choice to disregard the early years. I believe these have been the years that have shaped me and defined what kind of person I am and what kind of LIFE i will live.

Secondly, just as he counts 18 years of existence to not be important enough to recognize, he also throws out all the years the Lord blesses you with past 65. That's interesting to me that close to 50 years of Milton Bradley's life didn't seem to have any real importance. To me this is absurd! These are the years of grand-children and watching your own marry and go through those crazy years of adulthood. These are your wisest years.

Though the game would be more realistic if it had involved these years, I can understand the decision to leave them out. You may think that I'm criticizing his work, but on the contrary, I believe it to be a great piece. Milton Bradley chose to start the game at a time in life when you really start to live. Around that age you finally become your own person and no longer depend upon others to help you. And He so wisely thought to end the game upon a time in life when people start to live not for themselves but for other people. Putting themselves aside in their old age to tend to those younger still lost in the world.

I wondered at first why the game only had one path when so many people lead drastically different lives. Well, I asked the question earlier if Milton Bradley realized what he was really doing when he created this game. I believe that he did, and if I'm wrong, well then he was wise beyond his own understanding. All while creating a child's game he laid out the basics of any and all human lives. There is only one path, not because we all experience the same stuff, but because we all are bound to time. And sooner or later time will take us from youth to old age. That's what's really behind this game of life. Not the stuff in the middle, because that could change at any point. Every time you find yourself playing this game the you will land on a different event, and what happens to you will change. But every time you will always start and stop at the same places. He handed you the events, and left it up to you, the player to chose how to handle it and the emotions you met each new experience with.

This is how I think of God. He gives us all lives, and lays them out with different events and experiences. Things that we can't plan or change. But He leaves it up to us to chose how we handle it. We are all bound to this game of LIFE. But it's not the game that matters, it's what we chose to do with it.