Game of Life

While recovering from my injuries in 2013, I played Scrabble all my waking hours, stopping briefly for meals and personal hygiene routines only. I was trying to avoid taking painkillers by exercising my brain and keeping myself mentally occupied. For many years, there were two boxes of Scrabble sitting on the shelf in the recreation room. However, nobody wanted to play the game with me. So I resorted to play online with strangers on Facebook. Even though I was never a big fan of arcade type of games, I had to play arcade games in between the Scrabble moves to keep me busy. I was beginning to understand why arcade games are so addictive. As with material possessions, players always have an urge to get to higher levels every time they play. It is an addiction that is common for all ages since things usually do not play out the way that people plan. Arcade games provide apparently provide escapes from reality.

Online Scrabble is a snapshot of our society today. People seem to forget that it is just a game. Everyone is there just to win. Some youngsters have turned it into a game of "filling the blanks". They have no idea how to spell words with more than four alphabets. A few men play Scrabble to solicit cyber sex. After all it is a women's game and there is a high concentration of females. Most of the female players are no ladies either. I have been called names that I would be too embarrassed to repeat them here. I also discovered that there were websites dedicated to help people cheat at Scrabble when I had to wait for hours until the other player came up with the next word. At the end of the day, my love for the game could not help me to overlook the vulgarity of the players. Then I remembered why those boxes of Scrabble were collecting dust on the shelf.

Tree of Life

The Tree of Life carries different meanings for different cultures. The symbol is ubiquitous.  This is a magnificent image of such symbol on a wall of Wat Xieng Thong in Luang Prabang, Laos.

One meaning is the propagation of human life. These days people are more into investigating their roots and the genealogy charts certainly resemble trees. The family trees intertwine with each from marriages and adoptions. This Eastern interpretation carries an connotation of finite time frame of earth's history. Ironically it goes hand in hand with creationism as suggested by the Judeo-Christian faith. In my case, I am a dead branch in the traditional sense because I am an unmarried middle-aged person and have no children.

A second belief is that the tree of life represents the accumulation of wisdom and knowledge. This interpretation is taken from the Book of Genesis. There is a Tree of Knowledge in the centre of Garden of Eden. However, this idea collaborates with the Buddhist belief of birth and rebirth. There is no finite start or end of the earth. The cycles are intermingled among all living things, human, animal, fish, plant, etc. The pain and suffering in this life is attributed to the bad karma that I created in my past life. I nourish my tree of life by doing good deeds and learning from my life lessons.

During these injury recovery days, I have had more time to reflect upon both interpretations. I accidentally opted for the latter paradigm to avoid complicated human relationships. I should hope that I lead a happier life because of the good karma that I have attained. When my physical form expires, I would like to have people remember me by the wisdom that I have gained.