Snakes and Ladders

"Sometimes life feels a bit like Snakes & Ladders. We’re all moving across a 2D grid trying to get to the end of a game dictated by dice, made more entertaining whenever a snake or ladder is stepped upon. 

The ladders are love, they lift us, they raise us up towards our goal, the end point, the finishing point. Snakes are like snake oil salesmen who peddle mistruths upon our own desires for wellness, happiness, health, and everlasting contentment in life etc.

The salesman is aware of our needs, and promises us many desirable things we'll receive on terms that cunningly threaten to take away what we hold most dear at the same time - truth, honesty, connection...

Ladders represent the specific amount of progress one can expects taking an alternate route also heading in the direction of the end. Predictable long ones and short ones. The snakes are digressive. They can never be straight and simple in form. They take us back to where we were before, surrounded by the same artefacts we thought we'd moved on from. 

The same songs we've played to death, the same smells that have lost all magic, the same stories whose endings bring no surprise, the same friends we go through the motions with each time we meet... 

We become memories of who we were before but without the parts of our selves that have been lost in the promises made to us by the snakes. 

Up and down the grid we travel, until at some point we look up, and realise the game that is actually being played above our heads. 

Chance. Being forced to roll the dice. Our role within the game we didn't realise we had been playing unawares all along. Seeing yourself from a distance, as an object in the, as a character playing allows one opportunity to leave the grid completely and move on without snakes or ladders, by something akin to faith, by embodying the structures that contain us, gazing at the dotted lines we've been expected to follow, and looking towards the gaps in between, seeing the myriad of truths within them that allow us to create our own meaning.

Creating meaning then becomes a purpose in itself, a journey and not an end point we should strive to get to. Not something to finish, but something to explore indefinitely with love, passion, and the with the joy in others that also float in this realm, a realm which is between the stars and the sea, as we travel across its landscapes with our own stories, our own sounds, histories and cultures that transcend the borders of maps with a hope that is carried by fellow human beings who also look for meaning in a world, where there is none."

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For me, I think the trick is realising that the game we're playing is actually called Snakes are Ladders. But even more than that. Snakes are Springboards. Snakes are Adders - if you know how to launch yourself off them correctly. Snakes are like big springy coils that give you an elevating boost if you've propelled yourself at the right time. The spring in the step can be the gravity from the vow of our refusal to ever accept we need  to never allow ourselves to feel again. 

Ladders are just linear progressions of benefit that elevate us a specific amount higher than we were before. Ladders are a bit boring. They're like Forrest Gump's nightmare. A box of chocolates all the same flavour - "You always know what you're gonna get...", Forrest said glumly.

Snakes may be lies and mistruths we are sold by others, but they are mainly lies and mistruths we sell to ourselves.

Snakes are the promises that exchanges and transactions we make now can lead to much needed immediate gain without any pain. Very often we deny that these instant boons could turn out to be detrimental to us in the end or have any kind of inherent detrimentality, no matter how mild. We convince ourselves there won't ever be a price to pay for the wonderful benefits that were purchased for a mere pittance.

But there is always a price to pay for anything that seems too good on its surface. 

So it's vital to gauge exactly what that price will be first, or at the very least, accept that the price we finally end up paying for what we got will be more than we parted with at the time - and then weigh up whether or not it makes sense to go ahead with the purchase. 

When I play a game of Snakes and Ladders, the entire board is filled with 'GOAL' squares. I've already won. And so playing consists of me just sightseeing through the game's afterlife, exploring its mechanics and learning how it works.

I'm enveloped by its meaning everywhere I go and don't go. It's the main reason my solitude can't ever become malnourished and turn into loneliness.

Because meaning is everywhere, permeating the vacuum of existence. 

Meaning is like dark energy, a substance which makes up 70% of all energy in the entire universe. Did you know, that there is more energy in the empty space in the universe, than there is in all the planets, stars, galaxies and black holes combined? I shit you not!

But this dark energy doesn't interact with matter as we know it, so how do we know it's actually there? Because we know what it isn't, and we can measure the effects it has on the things that surround it. At present, the true nature of dark energy is unknowable. Even so, we are able to deduce the scale of its ubiquity and likely effect. 

The solid matter that we can see, taste and touch makes up only 5% of all matter in the universe. 95% of everything that is, is hidden from our view. And so the key to having the energy to be able to take on the world, remain cordial with others at all time in ways which advance both towards a point creating shared truths in the agreements made - the limitless store of energy you need in order to operate at your peak, is literally in the air you're currently breathing.


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I feel like a beagle on the scent of a fox hiding very nearby!!

Thinking about the Snakes and Ladders metaphor again, and the idea that those who play feel that their goal is to reach the top. It was act of reaching a certain level of ascension before one's counterparts had, which was the principle event which precipitated the rush of pleasure into the blood stream. I was thinking how this idea didn't feel quite right to me.

I thought about it for a short time before my brain started doing a wheelie without telling me - began accelerating at full throttle and refused to listen to sense...

Reaching the top I thought was the wrong way to look at the sense of progression one makes towards a final life goal. 'Arriving at the source of an important realisation', seemed to chime a lot more.

But what is the force that draws us closer to where the sense of this realisation is always stronger?

Gravity. 

Gravity is a product of mass. It is a manifestation which occurs naturally whenever something has substance. Things which possess substance draw us towards it.

Gravity is the force by which a body attracts objects towards it centre. Once two bodies are connected in this way, gravity becomes the force which initiates the movements of their dance as they begin orbiting one another.

But each time we orbit each other, the distance between us grows closer, through the pull of attraction, and the spectre of an eventual collision is evoked. 

Our goal or destiny or purpose or the reason or point of existence is to seek out people whose gravity is in perfect sync with our own. Two gravities that are perfectly fine tuned, keeping us at a distance which is as close as possible, without us ever touching. Perpetually orbiting one another without fear of annihilation. An eternal dynamo of dialectic. For as long as is necessary. Until the finitude of time asks this question.

Are you both now ready? 

Is now the time for the moment of contact. The moment of the sublime. Sublimation. When both bodies absorb equally into each other, not one by the other. The merging of equals.

Our destiny is to achieve the perfect death of our selves. To die simultaneously in nothing but joy with the other, in an act of fusion. Marriage. Mutual self-sacrifice so complete it gives birth to a truer beginning this time round.

The need to feel the desire for peace trumps our need to see peace itself manifest.