The Game of Life

“If you could eliminate one day from your past so that you never had to live through it, what day would you erase?”

“If you could ask a single question of a dead relative, what would it be and of whom would you ask it?”

These questions come from a little book I’ve been reading as a way to begin the New Year. If. . . (Questions for the Game of Life) by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell (New York: Villard, 1995). My partner and I have been playing it, one of us throwing out a question, and then both of us sharing responses.

Some questions are easy and fun: “If you had the chance to make any one purchase that you passed up in your lifetime, what would it be?” (Ah, no contest! The set of antique china we found on the Oregon coast some eight years ago, but were too timid to buy.”

Others are a challenge: “If you could choose the very last thing you will see before death, what would it be?” (That took some reflection; although I’m not a gardener, what I think I’d most want to see is perfect, full-blown rose.)

Still others plunge us into an intimacy we may or may not have considered: “What is the one thing from your past about which you feel the most guilty?” (OK, so I’m chicken—I pass!)

It’s a fun game, and a good relationship-builder. And yet I wonder: what happens if I go a step farther and take the initiative of shaping the questions I need to hear.

IF . . . I want to make this year the best one of my life, what one attitude will I change, starting right now?

IF . . . I truly believe that hope is possible and love is real, how will I let it show?

IF . . . I want to live so that my values show, what one thing will I do TODAY?

Your questions may be different from mine, and your answers surely will. But that’s the beauty of the “Game of Life.” There are as many questions as you need. And only YOU can shape the answers—IF . . . you only take your values in hand and dare to begin.