Remember Tetris? It was a game with such a simple concept that it would probably bore the new generation of video gamers to death with its perceived monotony.

Different shaped blocks would fall, the player would arrange them to make lines, and then the lines would vanish. The longer one played, the faster the blocks fell until finally the player would become overwhelmed and unable to place them correctly. When the block tower reached the top, the game was over.

At first glance, the game is pretty basic.

But if you really analyze what is happening within the game you will see correlations to real world problems. Things pile up and sometimes you get the worst possible shaped block at the most inconvenient time. You can’t always place it where you want it to go, leaving small, unsightly holes in your structure and depriving you of points.

Isn’t that life; full of obstacles raining on us daily as we scramble to put things in their place? We don’t get to pick our pieces in Tetris, so we just have to play with the hand we are dealt. Sometimes things don’t fall correctly, and we have to do our best to straighten them out over time.

No single mistake will doom you in Tetris, or in life. There’s more blocks falling and more days ahead, and with that comes more opportunities to make it right.

When you finally do line the blocks up perfectly and score all four lines at once, the screen flickers for a second, awards points and erases your accomplishment. More blocks are already falling before you even have a chance to celebrate. They never stop, because there is no true ending or big finish – I can assure you that you will quit before the game does.

Nobody “beats” Tetris, you just enjoy it while it lasts. I would advise the same in life.

n life.