Opinion
Game of Life: Who knows where the time goes?
When my daughter, having completed the handful of puzzles we have in the house, approached me to play the board game Game of Life, I resisted. Distant childhood memories place that one up there with Monopoly in terms of games that go on too long and usually conclude with someone storming off or upending the board.
I offered to play Cluedo or cards but she persisted, so I compromised by setting a timer and agreeing to play for 10 minutes. By that time, of course, I was already through college and curious to see how my life would turn out, so I played on.
Puzzles and board games have become popular during the lockdown. Credit:AAP
In the first game, I was a videogame designer with two kids. By the second game, with a third player having eschewed screen time to join us, I had become a pilot, although, unfortunately, I brought my cat to work and got sacked. It all turned out OK, though: I changed jobs and became a secret agent on the same salary.
Perhaps it’s because in real life I have made my way through many of these pathways on the board, of education, family, career, that the game was less theoretical and more relatable than when I first played it as a child. It didn’t seem to take as long as I remembered. Retirement, the end of the game, loomed far too quickly for my liking, at the end of a series of life decisions, paydays and a property purchase or two.
Many of us live this way, caught up in a routine of busyness from which we sometimes lift our eyes in amazement to observe how tall the children have become, how quickly the seasons have rotated, how fast we seem to have reached another milestone birthday.
Coronavirus has forced a change on us, made the city fall asleep while the neighbourhood has become alive with parents out on bikes with children, couples holding hands on early-morning walks and people sweeping up leaves on paths outside their homes.
Locals have time to look up from what they are doing and nod in greeting to those passing by. The air is chill but the sun is bright and warming as the birds assert themselves loudly in their interactions in streets devoid of noisy cars. This is living.
I can’t tell you how long it took to play the Game of Life twice. I only know that we became so absorbed in what we were doing side by side on the bed, the board balanced on my knee, that the clock inside my head stopped ticking and the mental list of things I had to do rolled itself up like a scroll and time ceased to matter.
Melissa Coburn is a Melbourne-based freelance writer.