My Free Cell life

For the last couple of weeks my spare moment game has been Free Cell.  You know, the solitaire game that you played on your computer back in the early days of Windows?  That one.  I used to play a word boggle game and tell myself that I was keeping my brain sharp by playing it.  (Brains that have experienced mild traumatic brain injury might need to be exercised more.) This year, though, I grew tired of that game and started playing this one once or twice a day. 

At first I could always solve the game and send the cards automatically to their decks on top.  But then I hit one that I couldn't solve.  I could have gone on to a new deal, but instead I told the game to replay the deal and I tried it again.  And that time I figured it out.  Every now and then I have to replay a game now, and a couple of times I've had to replay one 5 or 6 times.  Eventually I've gotten it, started on a different side and worked a different way and then it finally works.

It strikes me that this is like life.  Some things don't have to be totally specific, they can go however you want them.  But some things have to be more precise, and so you have to try again and again until you get them right.  Sometimes things don't work out right and you just need the replay button, a step back to examine another way to handle a difficult problem.  When I'm playing Free Cell I don't get upset when I have to hit the replay button, I actually become more interested in the game, curious to see if I can see a new way to do it the next time.

I think I'm going to try to see if I can think of my life a little more as if it were a free cell game--less stress when I don't manage to do something the way I wanted to, more curiosity about the opportunity to try it again.  Who knows--the game could be good for my brain and my life as well.