The Game of Life.
Imagine that you are playing a game. It’s beautiful, yet dangerous. If you are winning, the rewards exceed your wildest dreams. If you are losing, the punishments are horrendous, worse than the nightmares where you wake up sweating and panting in the early hours of the morning, where there are still deep shadows in the corner of your room.
This game is different in that it is not optional. You have to play. You also have a randomly determined starting point, which can have a huge affect on the range of possible outcomes. Anything is possible, but certain positions are far easier to start with.
The game has rules, but the most important ones are not written down. The ones that are written down, are confusing, old-fashioned, and often contradicting. There are new rules being written each day, and different areas have different rules, and there are too many for you to ever be able to fully understand.
And yet, if you break the rules, the punishments can be severe. You can spend the rest of your life in a concrete box, or you can even have your life snuffed out.
Everyone breaks some rules, this is inevitable, but you have to avoid breaking rules that have the most severe punishments.
If this was a board game, you would probably choose not to play. And yet, this is life, and most of us choose to continue playing.
