I used to love to play Monopoly. I’m not sure why because the game would take forever to play and I usually ended up losing. Nevertheless, I loved to play it and I was obsessed with drawing the “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. I loved to tuck it under my side of the board knowing that I couldn’t get stuck. That I always had a way out.
That one card in Monopoly allows us to bypass the system. It offers us a short cut.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had one of those little cards in life? A little something that you could tuck into your back pocket that would provide some security if you ever needed help?
What risky thing would you do if you knew you had a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card? What part of the game are you not playing because you are afraid you won’t win? What would you do differently if you had some security in knowing how it would all turn out?
Unfortunately, I have yet to find one of those little cards in life. Instead, I have found that we must take risks knowing that we might get stuck. That we might land somewhere that we don’t want to. And, that there are no guarantees on anything.
But I have also found that it is in the risk-taking that we find our strengths. We will all undoubtedly try things that won’t work out but consider those things just one step closer to something that will. Anything that is valuable requires our time and attention to achieve.
And although it is tempting to take a short cut in order to get where we want to go, this will ultimately cheat us out of the very opportunities we seek to find. We live a fast-paced life and we think we want to bypass the system but ironically it’s the system that teaches us the lessons we need in order to succeed. It is only through the long series of bumps in the road, the trials and errors, and the frustrations that we endure that we find out who we truly are.
