2 Lessons. 1 Game. Ready?

The Game: The board is a square checkerboard with one player’s pieces starting on each edge. The goal is to move all of your pieces to the opposite edge by moving one square or jumping other adjacent pieces. The challenge comes in by having all pieces turned upside down making them all appear the same. No one can tell whose pieces are whose from color or markings.

The game progresses easily as each player carefully slides a few pieces forward into the middle of the board. When one player makes a move of a jump, all eyebrows raise in concentration. A few more jumps and some concerned looks appear. Usually the youngest player will make a huge double jump with triumphant success to have a piece reach the opposite side. They flip the piece over and… it’s not theirs!

Lesson 1: Order matters. Our brains remember things in order. When the items have their order changed, our memory does not automatically get reordered. If you talk to an elderly person, they have great chronological memories, but remembering what they had for lunch can take some time. With her great memory, my mom should have been the master at this game. Once the pieces began jumping about, one of us kids would move her piece and doubt would take hold. No one would know until it reached an edge and the identity was revealed.

Lesson 2: You don’t make progress unless you move your pieces. Kind of a basic thought until you think about how complex our lives can be. We can put a lot of effort into a lot of different things. Suddenly, years later it feels as though we have not done much to improve any one aspect of our own lives. Keep track of and keep pushing one aspect of your life forward. Otherwise, we can look at the whole picture and see only chaos. Not good feeling.

Wishing you a Happy Friday.