The Game of Life

Life is a game. Your birth symbolizes the first move. Every choice and every decision after that plot out your life. The mission of the game is to immortalize yourself. As Goethe said to "exist" we must be willing to make strategic decisions.

During peoples life people chose to act a certain way to create a favorable reputation for themselves. John Smith even fabricated his own accounts to make his life seem more glorious and his achievements more valiant. By writing these accounts he was taking time away from living, or his "existence", to his "exist" forever in history. This phenomenon is not specific to just Smith, many people from the past and today take time away from their life to document their life the way they want people from the future to remember them. This concept can in turn lead to other problems. Today it is seen in social media. People are constantly posting pictures and updating their statuses. They are taking time away from what they are doing to share it with the world. Whether they realize it or not, these actions are to show others what they are doing in order for others to create an impression of them. People want others to perceive them in a certain way. The actions of colonial writers are judged because we now know the tales they told may not be completely true, but we do the same thing today. A picture is worth a thousand words, so a picture of two people smiling together may convey one image, but it is likely that it is hiding a completely different story.

People of the past and the present have the same goal in mind: to create a favorable reputation. Writers of the past had a more long term focus in comparison to the people today. Irregardless, people are not living life to its fullest. There is a lack of continuity as people are more concerned with the best way to document and present what they are experiencing; they are giving up their existence. As Goethe also said, life is like an "art", it is a shame to waste the beautiful experience. In conclusion, the best move- the winning move- is to stop competing, and to just live today, for today.