Column:

Tetris teaches life lessons by example

By Ryan Beck

Published Dec. 7, 2007

Tetris: a simple game about falling blocks or the troubles and lessons of life brought in consumer format? I believe that Tetris is truly the latter. "It's just blocks!" you might say. Tetris teaches patience, understanding and problem solving when holes or the wrong piece at the wrong time are thrown at you. And like life, as you get further into it, it moves that much faster. Tetris is a great game; life is a greater game.

But what kind of game is life? A board game? Not a good one. I think life's game has to be Tetris: where each piece is a symbol for a problem. When you're small, problems come at you slowly and everything seems to fit. And your life starts to build. It's simple. But as you get a bit older, things seem to pile up: emotionally, mentally and physically. Life is just a bit more difficult. Still you can just look at what is around you, which is moving at a pace you can handle, and connect everything until all your problems go away.

Then you get even older and life continues speeding up. But it's no match for you because you've done this before. In fact, you've solved harder puzzles than this. But everything moves faster and faster. You start to build your life in expectance of one thing: the line. Then comes one piece on top of another, but you're not worried. You know the line will come soon and wipe out your troubles.

But then something clicks in your mind: "What if the line never comes?"

You try to get everything to go away, but you can't — there is something left behind from the last level. All the while it's moving faster and faster as you get older. Until one day, your life is moving so fast that you freeze. You freeze, and the pieces just stack up, until you are swallowed up whole.

In life you can never wait for Mr. or Mrs. Right, or that one big opportunity — because they will never come. In Tetris, you cannot just sit back and wait for the line piece to come because ultimately you will get blocks — blocks upon blocks and those little "z"-looking pieces. You get blocks in Tetris and blocks in life. Many people sit and wait on that key piece to solve their problem. Tetris teaches us that we have to make what we can with what we've got. It's about making the right choices now, so you don't end up making a mistake later. And like life, you never know what you are going to get next. But with smart choices now, you can make sure that no matter what life throws you, you can get it into place. Like in life, nobody likes holes. But bad things happen and if you accept a hole now and take a chance, you can clear everything later.

But it doesn't have to be like this. Tetris is life. You never know what piece is going to come next. You bank on a line, but you get an L. You have to do what you can with what you have. Take each problem, no matter how big or small, and just get rid of it. You can't always go for the Tetris and try to knock four lines out at once. You've got to just take what you can get. Because I've found out, if you build up your hopes and your blocks so tall that you can have one and only one piece to fill that hole, well, you're going to lose. If you wait your whole life for that one thing to just come along and fit right in, it won't happen. Instead, you have to make things happen in life. Get up and go play.

rjbwbc@mizzou.edu