Memory

Remember the game "Memory"?  Where you had different cards or tiles flipped upside down and you had to find the two that were the same?  The goal was to find the most pairs of cards or pictures that matched; once you found a pair, you always got to go again, that was the real kicker.  I'll admit, I was never good at this game.  I could never remember which picture was where, and usually I would just give away pieces for my friends to find and I would usually be only left with a couple matches, never enough to win.  It's such a simple game, a kids game, one that we probably haven't played since elementary school.


I think that it's a game that we should still be playing as we get older.  Maybe not matching Disney characters on the floor of our living room, but maybe applying the "matching game" to other aspects of our life.  I know I often come up with an idea, thought or belief that I then try to apply to other areas of life and then it doesn't match up.  I'm not so much talking about the "memorizing" as I am the "matching".  So often, when I speak with people, they are flipping over the "Mickey" card and the "Minnie" card, grabbing both and putting it in their pile as if it's a match, but it's not.  It's okay to be wrong, right?  It's just not okay to pretend as if they are the same thing.  The kicker here is that for many of us, we don't understand that there is a difference in the two cards we put into our pile.  Many times we don't even look, we just flip two over and keep them.  The truth is that they don't match up.


I think we all could spend a little more time looking at our tiles instead of just grabbing which ever pieces we feel like matching and then saying "I WIN!"  How often did you and your friends argue about whether you flipped over matching cards or not?  It's pretty obvious if they are or not (and usually we have directions to help us out if it gets confusing).  In life, however, the matching tends to be more complicated.  Spend a few minutes to reflect on your thoughts, ideas and beliefs...ask yourself, do I really believe this?  Why do I think this?  Where did I get this from?  Apply it somewhere else and see if it still holds true.  If it doesn't, then it's not a match and you have to keep looking.