It's one of those games that you simultaneously hate but want to play. I used to think that it must be nearly impossible to win a game of minesweeper; I never gave any thought to the seemingly random numbers that appeared when I clicked the right square. It seemed as if you just had to blindly guess which squares didn't contain the mines and hoped that you could somehow click all the right ones. (I wonder what the odds of winning would be if that were how the game went...) Eventually I figured out what the numbers meant and now I like to think I'm fairly good at the game. And now that I'm fairly good, I noticed that the more I play, the more I see parallels between the game's virtual minefield and the game of life.
At first the comparison of this frustrating little game with life itself seems unusual to say the least. Without really playing the game very much, one could say that making a mistake and clicking on the wrong square could be like making a really big mistake that kills you; in both instances you die (in one of them, literally). A casual player could also say they're both difficult. To really discover and appreciate the similarities between minesweeper and life, however, you have to play the game quite a bit and for a while (and not just on beginner!).
Even though the numbers on the minefield tell you how many mines are around, some of the game still requires educated guesses if not blind guessing. It makes an interesting combination: You can form a sort of strategy and work off the evidence you have, yet you're often forced to do some guessing — guessing that can leave your outcome and luck in the game hinging on mere chance. And obviously life's a lot like that. Just like how you can use the numbers to decide how you go about the game and control your "destiny," in life you can use knowledge, resources, and other things you can control to decide how to live and how to control your future. At the same time though, in both minesweeper and life you sometimes can't really control your next move with any real certainty and you're often stuck leaving your fate and outcomes to chance.
In both minesweeper and life there are patterns that we can discover, many of them governing how we proceed. Check out the below sample of a minesweeper field for an example:
The two corner squares, the two with the ones at their lefts, bottoms, and bottom-left corners, jump out first as the squares that for certain contain mines. We can then utilize our recognition of the pattern we see in the sample to freely click the three squares above the second blue 1 and the the squares at the top, right, and top-right of the first green 2. This would likely reveal more patterns where we can easily infer which squares to click. Although recognition of these patterns is necessary for playing and winning, the game goes much better if you know the patterns very well and can blow through much of the field like you already know beforehand where the mines are. Life is similar in this sense. There are various patterns, many of them that in a way govern our lives, that we live through whether we recognize them or not. They are patterns of following rules or laws; following established procedures and practices to accomplish something; and, most ambiguous yet probably most important, generally just routinely doing what it takes to live well. To be aware of these patterns and to realize how intertwined they are with life allows us to perform better at . . . well . . . life since we know how to "play the game." Being able recognize and subsequently utilize life's patterns to become more pro at life is a lot like working the virtual patterns to become pro at minesweeper.
The farther into a game of minesweeper you go (as well as the longer you play the game), the more you see the bigger pattern emerge; in other words, the longer you play, the more you see how the smaller patterns (like the one shown above) don't just simply add up to a bigger pattern, but seem to work together to make the big picture you see when you win the game. In life, the longer you "play," the more you see the larger pattern of life and how all the smaller, seemingly individual patterns really work together into something you can only begin to notice and appreciate as you get older.
And it's not just passively participating in minesweeper or life that will allow one to see how these patterns work together to make the big picture. To see the big picture, you have to engage it more: Pay attention to both what you're doing in the game and how the squares around you are unfolding as well as how life unfolds around you and how it unfolds. And the more you participate and engage yourself and recognize this new pattern structure, the better you'll be able to see either the game or life in a novel way and appreciate the sublime interconnectedness of its components.
Sometimes when I'm playing minesweeper the arrangement of mines and numbers doesn't seem to quite fit and I'm left for a bit wondering what's going on. When I see the bigger picture though, I see that there isn't in fact a glitch or anything, there just wasn't enough information to get my head fully around the situation. Again, life is a lot like this. You'll find yourself in a situation that doesn't seem right; either the cause seems unfitting or nonexistent or maybe there doesn't seem to be any sort of intelligible point to what's going on. Once some time passes, however, more things come into play that can shed light on the original situation and the big picture you gain shows you what's really going on and why it makes sense.
The ways these patterns are interconnected and cooperative is a lot like, in real life, the way different fields of study compliment each other. Take the below picture for a visual example:
Within the circles are patterns that, although they appear to be inherently separate, are connected and work together to solve the whole field. To bring in real life, we could call the pattern in the top circle the study of physics and the bottom circle the study of chemistry. At first they seem like two distinct and separate fields of study, but when you start to really analyze both subjects and then look at the world in a bigger frame of reference, you see that they're both connected, compliment each other, and are necessary to understand the other. Chemistry may deal with the bonding of atoms, but to really understand it, you must know the physics behind the atom's fundamental properties that allow them to bond. Similarly, while sociology looks at the patterns of people in society, you need psychology to understand what goes on in the individual to ultimately drive these social patterns. To understand much of the workings of the individual's psychology, you need to know the biology behind the brain and the process of natural selection that led to the development of both the physical brain and the mental thought patterns that come from it. Basically, to have any sort of decent understanding of the way the world works, you have to take the seemingly individual "patterns" that are these various fields of study and recognize how they complement each other and work together to define this world. The way the world works, as defined by these interconnected sciences, define and govern life. In minesweeper, although the two patterns highlighted above seem separate, they work together upon deeper inspection and define the minefield.
The similarities between minesweeper and life are obviously pretty abstract and even a bit ambiguous, making them difficult to describe. If one plays a lot of minesweeper and pays attention to the nature of the game, then one can really catch a glimpse of these similarities. I think that's a big reason why I like the game; it's cool to be able to play such a simple game that allows you to get a small feel for how it reflects life.
At first the comparison of this frustrating little game with life itself seems unusual to say the least. Without really playing the game very much, one could say that making a mistake and clicking on the wrong square could be like making a really big mistake that kills you; in both instances you die (in one of them, literally). A casual player could also say they're both difficult. To really discover and appreciate the similarities between minesweeper and life, however, you have to play the game quite a bit and for a while (and not just on beginner!).
Even though the numbers on the minefield tell you how many mines are around, some of the game still requires educated guesses if not blind guessing. It makes an interesting combination: You can form a sort of strategy and work off the evidence you have, yet you're often forced to do some guessing — guessing that can leave your outcome and luck in the game hinging on mere chance. And obviously life's a lot like that. Just like how you can use the numbers to decide how you go about the game and control your "destiny," in life you can use knowledge, resources, and other things you can control to decide how to live and how to control your future. At the same time though, in both minesweeper and life you sometimes can't really control your next move with any real certainty and you're often stuck leaving your fate and outcomes to chance.
In both minesweeper and life there are patterns that we can discover, many of them governing how we proceed. Check out the below sample of a minesweeper field for an example:
The two corner squares, the two with the ones at their lefts, bottoms, and bottom-left corners, jump out first as the squares that for certain contain mines. We can then utilize our recognition of the pattern we see in the sample to freely click the three squares above the second blue 1 and the the squares at the top, right, and top-right of the first green 2. This would likely reveal more patterns where we can easily infer which squares to click. Although recognition of these patterns is necessary for playing and winning, the game goes much better if you know the patterns very well and can blow through much of the field like you already know beforehand where the mines are. Life is similar in this sense. There are various patterns, many of them that in a way govern our lives, that we live through whether we recognize them or not. They are patterns of following rules or laws; following established procedures and practices to accomplish something; and, most ambiguous yet probably most important, generally just routinely doing what it takes to live well. To be aware of these patterns and to realize how intertwined they are with life allows us to perform better at . . . well . . . life since we know how to "play the game." Being able recognize and subsequently utilize life's patterns to become more pro at life is a lot like working the virtual patterns to become pro at minesweeper.
The farther into a game of minesweeper you go (as well as the longer you play the game), the more you see the bigger pattern emerge; in other words, the longer you play, the more you see how the smaller patterns (like the one shown above) don't just simply add up to a bigger pattern, but seem to work together to make the big picture you see when you win the game. In life, the longer you "play," the more you see the larger pattern of life and how all the smaller, seemingly individual patterns really work together into something you can only begin to notice and appreciate as you get older.
And it's not just passively participating in minesweeper or life that will allow one to see how these patterns work together to make the big picture. To see the big picture, you have to engage it more: Pay attention to both what you're doing in the game and how the squares around you are unfolding as well as how life unfolds around you and how it unfolds. And the more you participate and engage yourself and recognize this new pattern structure, the better you'll be able to see either the game or life in a novel way and appreciate the sublime interconnectedness of its components.
Sometimes when I'm playing minesweeper the arrangement of mines and numbers doesn't seem to quite fit and I'm left for a bit wondering what's going on. When I see the bigger picture though, I see that there isn't in fact a glitch or anything, there just wasn't enough information to get my head fully around the situation. Again, life is a lot like this. You'll find yourself in a situation that doesn't seem right; either the cause seems unfitting or nonexistent or maybe there doesn't seem to be any sort of intelligible point to what's going on. Once some time passes, however, more things come into play that can shed light on the original situation and the big picture you gain shows you what's really going on and why it makes sense.
The ways these patterns are interconnected and cooperative is a lot like, in real life, the way different fields of study compliment each other. Take the below picture for a visual example:
Within the circles are patterns that, although they appear to be inherently separate, are connected and work together to solve the whole field. To bring in real life, we could call the pattern in the top circle the study of physics and the bottom circle the study of chemistry. At first they seem like two distinct and separate fields of study, but when you start to really analyze both subjects and then look at the world in a bigger frame of reference, you see that they're both connected, compliment each other, and are necessary to understand the other. Chemistry may deal with the bonding of atoms, but to really understand it, you must know the physics behind the atom's fundamental properties that allow them to bond. Similarly, while sociology looks at the patterns of people in society, you need psychology to understand what goes on in the individual to ultimately drive these social patterns. To understand much of the workings of the individual's psychology, you need to know the biology behind the brain and the process of natural selection that led to the development of both the physical brain and the mental thought patterns that come from it. Basically, to have any sort of decent understanding of the way the world works, you have to take the seemingly individual "patterns" that are these various fields of study and recognize how they complement each other and work together to define this world. The way the world works, as defined by these interconnected sciences, define and govern life. In minesweeper, although the two patterns highlighted above seem separate, they work together upon deeper inspection and define the minefield.
The similarities between minesweeper and life are obviously pretty abstract and even a bit ambiguous, making them difficult to describe. If one plays a lot of minesweeper and pays attention to the nature of the game, then one can really catch a glimpse of these similarities. I think that's a big reason why I like the game; it's cool to be able to play such a simple game that allows you to get a small feel for how it reflects life.
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