Pinball Journey
The vision of my life as I currently am looking back upon it, is a giant pinball machine. All power and glitz and battles with paddles. Having lightning-fast reflexes that sometimes toss the ball back into the game and sometimes miss the ball completely.
There is excitement in the sounds of the bells and chimes and the whoosh of the ball launching. The board lights up and the points begin to climb. You throw yourself into the fray and you battle to keep things going. You see the ball coming your way and you hit the flipper button knowing this will be the one that flies up and gets the biggest score. You are a second to soon or too late, you hit the drain, and it is time to start over again.
Sometimes you have multiball plays and feel like a juggler trying to keep them all going. That is when the body language comes in and you are holding onto the machine for dear life believing that you can move it enough through sheer force to make it happen. Then TILT appears and you lose focus, and it is back in the drain again.
We are all pinball wizards in our own way. We know the machine and how to finesse it, but we also know that it is a fickle game of chance. One that is too easily distracting with all the backglass glimmer and flash but draws us back in time and again.
We believe we can reach our goals with just the first round of balls and as mentioned sometimes we double down and put multiple balls into play to increase our chances of the big prize. No matter how skilled we become, we know that there will be the time we have to dig into our pockets and find more money to play another round. Sometimes we have to stop the play all together to recoup our losses or rely on the kindness of family, friends or strangers to afford another attempt.
The thrill of the game is what makes life worth living. Even if we say we prefer a quiet and easy approach, there is something about the risk, the dexterity, and the strategy that keeps us stepping up for just one more try. Remember it is a game of skill, but it also relies a lot on luck. So as you are bouncing and careening off the walls of life, enjoy how lucky you are to be in the game.
