 This and That |
rocky mountain kids korner |
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
The Game of Life  Like
175 million other people worldwide, I recently joined the social
networking website, Facebook. Besides luring my own friends, I
pestered relatives, and my grown kids high school pals to join me in
snooping on one another. It’s been a hoot and for the first couple
of weeks, I was hooked. After mentioning in my status bar that
“Marlene is hooked on Facebook”, a friend commented back that
playing on the site can be as addictive as crack. I was having so
much fun one Saturday afternoon reconnecting with old friends that I
kept ignoring my daughter E’s request to play a board game. I
finally got my priorities straight and decided not to go down in
history as, “Mom never played a game with us”. Why do kids always
say that? Well give them an inch, they’ll take a mile. So I closed
the laptop to ward off temptation and told my girls to set up the
game on the kitchen table. M & E set up the Milton Bradley Game of LIFE. After a chance selection of occupations and receiving a playing piece to drive us around the board, we began to play. Through LIFE we traveled, collecting paychecks, making loans, having kids, and getting sick. Depending on the spin of the wheel and decisions made along the way, one could spend their retirement in Millionaire Estates or Countryside Acres. Some of this seemed like happenstance, while also being the consequence of choice. As I sat there playing, I kept thinking about my husband’s opinion of the game. What message was this game sending? My husband, David, (also known as Grandpa Davey) strives to follow “A Path With a Heart”, not the one where you have to live up to the Jones’s. Games like LIFE and online communities like WEBKINZ, condition our children to place too much value on money. They encourage life in the rat race, irresponsible borrowing, and spendthrift behavior. Get a job, be a consumer, live up to the Jones’s, and hope to live to retirement is a common theme. The message is, it’s where you live, what you wear, and how much you make that gives life meaning. It’s not up to me to tell you what gives life meaning as we are all on a journey of our own. I would simply remind you to take some quiet time with your inner-self and nurture the dreams that make your life worth living. ©03/02/09 |
|||
