Life is one big monopoly game

November 10, 2022 by
DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200

Life really is like Monopoly: You win by acquiring as much money and possessions as possible, but at the end, it all goes back in the box. 

Or your flight is cancelled.

It wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, considering we were sitting at plus 25 and Calgary was shivering in minus 25.

After two delays at the airport and running out of beer money, we now had to wait for instructions. Like picking up a gainful COMMUNITY CHEST card, it helped to assemble a tribe. Now the most anxious of us could relax, the most organized could lead, and the quickest of us could hold the elevator doors open.

I have to get past GO and collect my 200 bucks.

Finally getting to our chosen hotel, we were not so politely dismayed to learn that they had no knowledge of our Monopoly money – in other words, no little red hotel or meal tokens recognized.

Were we going to get the BOOT?

After numerous failed attempts with technology, the hotel graciously offered to honour the WestJet price and sell us each a room. So disposable toothbrush in hand, set and organized for our early morning flight, we realized that we neglected to check if there was a bar in the hotel.Is there any mercy?

But sometimes, JAIL is the best place to be.

In Monopoly, if you go to JAIL at the beginning of the game, you want to immediately pay the 50 bucks so you can get out on your next turn. You need to be buying property and collecting your $200, not contemplating prison tattoos and whether or not you can turn your stay into a Netflix series.

But once there are monopolies on the board, sometimes JAIL is the best place you can be because while you’re sitting pretty (in a warm hotel room), your opponent is still out there hopefully landing on your properties for which you can still collect rent, or flying in a huge snowstorm that may end up landing in Whitehorse, where it is even colder.

There are people, like in playing Monopoly, who wait for things to happen. They only want to buy a certain PROPERTY and nothing else interests them. At the beginning of the game they are the richest because they don’t spend money. Now in Monopoly, whoever is not investing remains in the same place instead of going forward. In other words, in the airport drinking overpriced gin tonics and eating bar-b-que chips tasting like sawdust soaked in cherry Kool-Aid.

Like the woman standing zombiefied staring up at the departure screen, or the man with a face that looked like it had been clamped by two sliding doors staring lifelessly into his empty coffee cup, or two people oblivious to the drama unfolding droning on about some sports team they worshiped, some consulting the oracle of their iPhone with a certain anguished diligence, and others milling around like empty bottles waiting for collection.

FREE PARKINGIn the middle of all the action, sometimes it’s not so bad to go to JAIL. If you start to look at the benefits, you can begin to enjoy and appreciate your circumstances. It just takes patience and a lot of snacks. It can also be time to do some deep thinking, like how to approach civilization without your hair brushed.

So at the crack of dawn, sans coffee, we stumbled aboard the first of many various and sundry transports back to the Atlanta airport. The drive from the first drop off to our gate was so long, I swear the driver missed a turn and I was back in South Carolina.


GAME CHANGER

In life, we have to fly frequently in order to learn and move forward. We can’t play it safe and have it easy all the time. The more we experience life as an unapologetic voyeur, and the more CHANCES we take, the more we learn. We can walk away from the game at any time, but there’s a big wide world to explore we may have forgotten existed while we were fixated on every role of the dice. 

Most of us are free to move, explore, learn, thrive…to get up from the board and change things, but often we don’t know it, losing future wealth.

Sometimes a roll of the dice puts us on an unscheduled flight and we have to wait while the scheduled move past us. And sometimes all sorts of things have to be lined up until we can move again, like SUITCASES, ramps and ground workers.

All we can do now is patiently count our accruing memories and fill out the paperwork.

Darling, it may not seem that way to you now, but there is an outside chance you will not live forever. You probably won’t spend all of your money, but it’s guaranteed you will spend all of your time.

So collect your $200, but every so often, wait it out in JAIL.
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