Metaphors For Life

Board games fascinated me as a kid, and simultaneously made me intensely competitive. Unlike athletics, the winners of these games were based on luck, chance, and careful strategy on occasion (i.e, I could win them).

I used to think The Game of Life was an accurate metaphor for real life, that it was a series of exciting events and checkpoints, to be followed in an orderly manner. Now that I think about it, life is more like Mousetrap. Not in gameplay much, but that it's made in order to teach children persistence and patience, but mostly we either made up new rules or gave up entirely. In gameplay, life is much like Clue(do? Does Canada engage in this pointlessness?), played in reverse. Life starts out very simply: people, locations, objects, all the basic nouns and concepts laid out in an orderly manner. But then it unravels, people start asking questions and things become less and less clear, and, eventually, death. In a variety of ways. Strange tangent: the word "variety" makes me think of foods that come in various flavors in the same container, e.g. jellybeans and other types of candy. Which makes me think that death has a flavor. (Which will you pick, children? The rare, exciting Fatal Freak Accident Fruit Punch? Old Age Orange? Gunfight Grape?)

The "life is like a box of chocolates" metaphor, however--getting to the title--is now rendered inaccurate, because most chocolate manufacturers include a little map of where the chocolate is. The random element of chocolate consumption is gone. And sometimes we need random elements, lest life become some horrible, predictable monotony.