Game Show

Looking back, looking forward, being presently here I feel perched between past choices and many yet to come.  Contemplating beginning, middles, and end lends to scrutiny of options taken.  Sitting in yesteryear’s future there is no way to know what would have become had I chosen differently.  I remember proselytizing pamphlets handed to me as a kid in which a person who seemed a game show host sits a man down to watch his life.  How interesting to think of life as a game show offering unseen prizes if we choose well.

The noun game show is defined at dictionary.com as “a television or radio program in which contestants answer questions or play games of skill or chance in order to win money or other prizes.”

I did not stay in my home town for college.  I could have investigated compounding interest in the eighties.  Eventually I took an option to move to Maryland.  Could have stayed home and rented a movie the night I met my husband.    

I’m feeling like a player in a global “Let’s Make a Deal” episode.  Remember that show?  People dressed up, assuming characters to get attention.  Folks waved signs and brought stuff to trade.  The unknown behind doors was sometimes wonderful, sometimes a zonk.  In tense moments contestants were offered something in a box instead of the door.  The host always got a kiss from the ladies. 

My game show feeling, unlike the sixty minute TV event, encompasses the on-going nature of life.  We get multiple sets of hypothetical doors to choose from.  The options keep coming and our life path unfolds.  I’m working to toss out the idea of anything being a punishment or reward and endeavor not to dwell on the mysterious, unopened doors.  We keep playing until we win the gift of being the kind of person we want to be.

Let’s Make a Life

search your purse for a teacher or nurse to guide you

heal you or worse, convert you to carrying a coin sack

and several pair of sandals shluffing heaps of supplies

what lies behind each door offered as prize temptation

wishes you take to make everything really right and end

daily happiness fight with one well-picked winning ticket

door number one could be a snake with relentless hissing

about what you might be missing without dissing dainty

forbidden fruit hanging lushly from above a vacation spot

another way is left to say behind a velvet curtain, compelling

yet untelling of what the soft supple drapes might conceal

maybe a red-hot-diggity  deal sizzling, steamy, expensive

slide aside wooden panels, decide as they glide that the shiny

new car will take you away, far from the start toward finish

gleaming garishness full of leather scented assurances

bounty or bust behind different doors dangling mysterious

possibilities that relinquish others but regret  nearly nothing

worse than living or laughing at an empty seat after the hour

still time to trade, karmic cascaded choices made to honor

yourself in knowing you take the best  option at each given

moment over time selections arise so that you need nothing