Friday, May 12, 2006

A Game of Solitaire

Solitaire... one of my favourite games on my comp... (thats because I haven't installed anything else! :P). After playing about a million games of solitaire over the past one semester, I realized something...

Isn't life kinda like solitaire?

I have not lost it! Trust me! I am serious. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that life is so much like solitaire and unlike FreeCell

  • Once you start a game of solitaire, you can't restart it (unlike FreeCell). You have to just move on with the game. Kinda like life. Once you take on some challenge or task, you can't restart or redo anything... most of the times... You just gotta follow the path ahead of you. There's no looking back or starting over.
  • Your "undo" option is very limited. You can undo only one move each time. Its the same with FreeCell... but why undo there when you can restart the game? In life also, often, we can't undo many of the things we do, or unspeak certain things that might have hurt someone. What's done is done. Things will undo themselves only if you are lucky.
  • The previous point leads on to this one... make a silly mistake that can't be undone, then you get tuck somewhere or the other and are forced to think your way out. Sometimes, there is just no way out. Game over. Isn't life also like that? We get stuck at times and have to really put our minds to the situation to get ourselves out of the mess we got ourselves into. Sometimes, there is no way out...
  • Solitaire is a timed game. The longer you take to complete it, the lesser points you score. In FreeCell you have all the time in the world to complete the game. Isn't life also a timed game? Its not like our stay here is permanent. We just don't have time very often to take our own time! (make sense?). And in some cases, some of our actions lose their value as we keep delaying them. Have you ever been through a situation where you make a mistake and apologize too late? Or when you feel that the apology from someone else came out too late? Thats just one example. There are several others.
  • Imagine you are in the middle of a game of solitaire. You have just placed an eight spade on nine hearts. Now you have seven diamonds and hearts to choose from. They lie on top of two decks of cards and you badly need an ace of something to win the game. This ace could be under either of the sevens. How do you make your decision? There is no answer to that question. You couldn't possibly predict what card lies underneath each seven. You just have to take a chance. If you get the ace, then well... YAY! But if you don't, you can't really blame yourself, can you? It was a damned if you did, damned if you didn't situation. Don't we face such situations in life also? Where we have no idea which is the right way to go or the right thing to do? Where we have no choice but to take a shot in the dark?
  • Sometimes we win the game by some really smart move... some totally brilliant move... A move which you thought you weren't capable of thinking out on your own... then you feel so proud that you can't stop smiling and you deal again to see if you can spot that brilliance again in a different game. Don't we have that spark of brilliance every now and then which helps us get through some task or challenge and encourages us to go on with another one?
Actually, come to think about it, life can also be kinda like FreeCell... It depends on how you look at life. Optimistic or pessimistic view.....

It is said that every game of FreeCell can be won. Some games are just more difficult than the others. But all can be won. And you can also choose your game in FreeCell. If you don't like game#15647, then you can play game#2897.

Do you believe every game in life can be won some way or the other? Do you believe you can truly choose your own path, make your own decisions? Or do you believe that not every problem has a solution and that you are rarely totally free to make a decision that is solely yours?

Life... A game of solitaire, or a game of FreeCell??

6 comments:

Sirius Black said...

nice blog :)
shift to games like GTA u ll knw tht life s more simpler with a pair of cheats lolzz
Keep bloggin

soleil said...

I've never played Freecell before so I don't know if life is more like Solitaire or Freecell. Anyway, I do believe that life is what you make of it whether it is more Solitaire-ish or Freecell-ish. Always focus on the process and if the end result is good then Hooray! But if it isn't, just be glad that you did your best and have no regrets. This may make life sound really easy although we know it can get terribly tough at times, but its something I try my best to live by ;)

Anusha said...

Solitaire, definitely. I believe not all games can be won in life, but it's all for the best. We're just not made to win some battles.

But, as Soleil said, life is what you make out of it. It's ultimately your choice - what game u decide to play, how u decide to play it, and what cards u choose to open. Your choice, your call. In the end, it's in our hands - that way, you can't blame mistakes on anyone/anything but yourself! ;)

Great analogy, btw. Turning the Sayesha way, are ya? :P

Macho Girl said...

#sirius black
Thanks :)

#soleil
//This may make life sound really easy although we know it can get terribly tough at times
Life is a complicated thing! We just make it sound simple with posts and comments like this. Thats human nature :)

#clueless
//We're just not made to win some battles.
You can say that again!

// In the end, it's in our hands - that way, you can't blame mistakes on anyone/anything but yourself! ;)
Yeah... but i sometimes wonder, whom to put the blame on when we make certain choices blindly because... well.. we have no other choice. Not really our fault is it? Not everything is in our hands...

//Great analogy, btw. Turning the Sayesha way, are ya? :P
If you wanna put it that way! I was just playing solitaire the other day and got stuck with 2 choices (2 red 7s, each having cards below them)and i picked the wrong card and lost the game... It was then that i started thinking (after the trauma of losing a game of solitaire :P) that it really wasnt my fault i lost.. i could have never known which was the right card to pick. Both had an equal chance of winning the game for me... then I started thinking about how life is like that sometimes with the famous "damned if u do damned if u dont" situation, then the entire post cropped outta nowhere!

dearbharat said...

Solitaire is a silly game. A game of chance. Not every game can be won. This is where I find resemblance between life and Solitaire.

One can certainly restart the game anytime. Try function key "F2" or simple ALT+G->D.

UNDO is there so that u go back only one step whereas restart resets all the steps.

In Solitaire u can choose between timed and untimed game. Have u ever tried going to options and deselecting timed??

Try more games. Solitaire is old fashioned. Did u try "Spider Solitaire". Freecell and minesweeper are better games than solitaire. Why dont u try NFS, RTCW, AoE, Civilization and lot more....

Macho Girl said...

#sow
Hey!!! long time huh? Got ur blog recently? good to see u after such a long time!

#bhaarat
i don't think F2 restarts the game. it gives you a whole new one. And yes I know u can have timed and untimed solitaire. This analogy was based on the solitaire that I play. Besides, solitaire wouldn't be solitaire to me if it wasn't timed.

//Try more games. Solitaire is old fashioned. Did u try "Spider Solitaire". Freecell and minesweeper are better games than solitaire. Why dont u try NFS, RTCW, AoE, Civilization and lot more....

I have tried every one of the games you mentioned. I play games on the comp mostly as a short 10 min break from all the work. These games that u have mentioned (apart from freecell and minesweeper) take up too much of my time. Once i start I don't stop. especially NFS. That's why i keep them away when there is work to be done and stick to solitaire, freecell and pinball. I get refreshed and i save time.

I chose to compare life to solitaire because its such a simple and common game.