Anybody remember Tetris? A silly little computer game, but for a while everybody I know was addicted to it. This is a silly little piece I wrote about my view as to why it was so addictive: Tetris is a metaphor for life. I couldn't think of where to publish it, so I sent it to the Mensa Bulletin, where it appeared several years ago.
There's this guy who claims that everything he really needed to know he learned in Kindergarten. He's hopelessly out of date.
There's this Russian video game called Tetris{TM). It's amazingly simple--all you have to do is stack up units of four blocks--and it's surprising how much there is to it. It was one of the first of the video games (well, who remembers Pong, anyway?) where you don't have to shoot anybody, you don't manipulate a little figure on a screen, and nothing gets blown up in 128 colors. In fact, the game is entirely abstract. You have groups of four squares, put together in various combinations, that fall down from the top to the bottom of the video screen.
The reason it's so fascinating, of course, is quite simple. For all that it looks like child's play, Tetris is really about life. Things come down, and you have to deal with them.
So, sorry, Mr. Fulgham. Everything I really needed to know about life, I learned from playing Tetris.
What I Learned About Life From Playing Tetris
- 1. Simple things can be more complicated than you'd expect.
- 2. It pays to be neat. Everything goes in its place. If you're playing it right, there's a place for everything--and everybody--no matter what shape.
- 3. You always have to watch what's coming down.
- 4. There's always something new on the way. Sometimes it looks like the same things you've already seen, but the combinations are always new.
- 5. What you did right gets forgotten immediately, but what you screwed up you have to live with.
- 6. Making a big pile isn't what you want to do, unless, of course, what you want when you get done is to have made a big pile.
- 7. Be ready for all the possibilities.
- 8. Too much of anything is rarely a good thing.
- 9. If you practice, you'll get better.
- 10. You don't always get what you want, but you have to deal with whatever you get.
- 11. Planning ahead is a real good idea.
- 12. If you make a mistake, sometimes fast fingers and clever thinking can work you out of it, but it's best to do it right in the first place.
- 13. Cursing doesn't help.
- 14. Life gets a lot easier if you keep an eye out for what's coming next.
- 15. If you slack off and get behind, it's awfully hard to work your way out of it.
- 16. Small differences are important. You'd better know know your p's from your q's, and your Ls from your Js.
- 17. If you can wait long enough, everything comes around.
- 18. The score isn't really what's important.
- 19. You started out with a playing field that you didn't make, but in the end, what you have is whatever you made of what you got.
- 20. Eventually every game ends, and there's no use crying about it.