Reflections

Reflections

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Breaking Bricks


If you are willing to look around and reflect on life’s lessons, you will find that there are lessons for learning everywhere. You can find it in your interactions with people, in your observations of nature and in everything that is happening around you at all times. 

Interestingly, you can even find it in the games on your phone.

Waiting outside the dentist’s chamber can be quite an ordeal. I sat there this morning, overwhelmed by the large number of people who were waiting patiently (and impatiently) around me, and feeling slightly apprehensive about what would invariably happen once I got to the dentist chair.

So to ease my mind and to pass the time, I took out my phone to play a game. The only game that is there on my phone is the Brick Breaker. I don’t know if you have ever tried it but it is quite an addictive game. Basically there is a wall of bricks on the top of the screen which the player must smash by deflecting a bouncing ball with a paddle. The player can move the paddle around horizontally to keep the ball on the screen and to aim at the bricks above.

The idea is to destroy all the bricks and advance onto a new level. At times when you hit certain bricks there are special points that shower down and if you can catch it you get certain benefits like an extra life, or more bouncing balls etc. While the latter is good (it helps to destroy many more bricks all at once), it also results in a chaotic situation. I found that by trying to save all the balls, one ends up missing all the others and before one knows it, there are none left on the screen and one life is lost.

This happened a few times before I came to the realization that it was far better to have one ball on the screen and to slowly (and with precision) target all the bricks one by one, rather than to juggle too many balls at once, lose focus and ultimately lose a life.

So, not surprisingly, the lesson I took from the dentist’s chamber this morning was not only that one should not indulge in eating too many sweets but that:  It is better to focus on one thing at a time and do it well rather than focus on many things and have little to show for it in the end.

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