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Pinball Wizard
Jun. 24th, 2022 10:30 am"It's just a game," I tell myself as I strip the soiled sheets off the bed at three o'clock in the morning. Just a game in which I'm playing at being a dutiful son and practising skills I haven't mastered yet- like patience, compassion, tolerance. The more I do this sort of thing the better I'll get at it. No pain, no gain. See things in these terms and you can almost persuade yourself you're having fun.
Some people I respect- Dolores Cannon, for instance- talk about Earth as a school. I shy away from that metaphor because I have very little love for the education system. No, I used to be pretty good at pinball (about the only game I ever mastered) so I prefer to think of life like that. I'm standing at the machine, fingers on the buttons, flipping the flippers at just the right moment, bashing or caressing the steel ball as the situation demands, getting the lights to flash and the bells to ring.
Eventually- back in the day- I got so good at the game that it became boring. One evening, in the little room by the college bar, where I'd been playing for hours off the one coin, racking up extra life after extra life, I reached the point where I'd had enough- so I straightened up, handed the controls over to someone else and walked away. I don't believe I ever played again.
Some people I respect- Dolores Cannon, for instance- talk about Earth as a school. I shy away from that metaphor because I have very little love for the education system. No, I used to be pretty good at pinball (about the only game I ever mastered) so I prefer to think of life like that. I'm standing at the machine, fingers on the buttons, flipping the flippers at just the right moment, bashing or caressing the steel ball as the situation demands, getting the lights to flash and the bells to ring.
Eventually- back in the day- I got so good at the game that it became boring. One evening, in the little room by the college bar, where I'd been playing for hours off the one coin, racking up extra life after extra life, I reached the point where I'd had enough- so I straightened up, handed the controls over to someone else and walked away. I don't believe I ever played again.
