The Game of Life

When I was little, I could spend hours playing this board game.

There was just something so fascinating about driving a miniature car through the maze-like course of years and experiences.  I was absolutely intrigued by the chance you took in drawing three cards to determine your career, your salary, and your home.  It was thrilling to fill your car up with more people pegs: a spouse, a baby boy, a baby girl, and twins!  Basically, I just loved how many ways your "life" could unfold and this board game provided me with the ability to vicariously live out all the possibilities.

Honestly, I don't really know how you win The Game of Life.  Of all the games I play, this is the only one I didn't really play to win.  I guess it probably comes down to who earns the most money, but usually by the time I'd roll into retirement I'd start taking the game down so I could play it again.  I love The Game of Life.

Today, I just plum love life.  

There is just something so fascinating about how the small choices and years come together to shape you into the person you are today.  I am absolutely intrigued by the possibilities and probabilities of where my life can go, what career I might follow, what my salary might be, and what sorts of houses I might live in.  I am thrilled to start figuratively "adding pegs to my car".  

Honestly, for this "game of life" I have an idea on what it means to win and I fully intend to.  A little while ago I blogged about having an eternal perspective, and I believe this is the perspective necessary to pull off a victory.  

So in true dork form, I've began analyzing things.  Critiquing my life.  Grading my progress.  This is what I've come up with.  

While out in Lake Louise last month for the Recreation Summit, there was one afternoon during a plenary address where it suddenly hit me that I needed a life report card.  Like really bad.  And I needed it RIGHT THEN.  I'm sure the other recorders sitting around me thought I must have forgotten to take my Ritalin that morning or that I was just super disrespectful to the speakers, but I couldn't stop myself.  I needed a report card.  Which is where that horrendous looking web diagram comes into play.  

I started by breaking my life down into categories.  Above are the seven categories I decided that cover practically my entire life.  After that I broke them into sub-categories.  And after that I proceeded to go around the entire web diagram assigning a letter grade score to each aspect of my life.  So what, I'm a nerd.  This is what that looked like.

Then those grades averaged to give me a grade on each category.  And then all the categories averaged to give me my overall LIFE GRADE.  Wow... I'm embarrassed putting this on my blog.  I'm beginning to see the magnitude of my nerdery.  But trust me, there is a point to this.  

After receiving grades for the various areas of my life, I realized I was acing the part of my life that doesn't matter all that much, namely, school.  And then I was really, really failing at the parts of my life that matter the most.  This is what my report card looked like:

School	A+
Church	B+
Dreams	D
Friends	C+
Family	C-
Health	B+
Work	C
Kristen Gibb	B-/C+

Now to sum this all up, I guess what I'm trying to say is this.

Life's a game and each must play their part.  Instead of starting out with $25,000 worth of paper money, we're given Time.  Instead of spinning a dial with the numbers 1 through 10, we're given agency.  Instead of following a maze-like course of squares stating the phases of life, we chart our own paths.  You can chose to compete, playing this game like each hour matters, like each relationship you foster counts, and like each piece of knowledge you gain is important.  Or you can chose to drift through, where the days melt together into meaningless and indistinguishable monotony.  Unlike the board game of my childhood, we can only play this game once and then it's all over.  Don't let the real game of life be as meaningless and dull as a board game.  

Decide now what matters.  When I'm old and grey, I'm not going to look back on the entirety of my life and think, I wish I could have had a 4.0 GPA back in college instead of that 3.0 I managed.  I'm going to reminisce about the people I wish I could have known better or the testimony I wish I could have grown stronger.  

Real life can be won.  There just happen to be areas of life that will lead you to a deeper and more meaningful victory.