Lessons from Monopoly

I played Monopoly with Rebecca this afternoon… & for the first time ever, I lost! I used to win at Monopoly when I was younger & usually win over Rebecca whenever we played this board game. What happened this afternoon was rather surprising (though not shocking) & taught me a few lessons that I wish to share.

1) Nobody ever wins forever

Sporting games’ records don’t stay with one champion for all of eternity. Over time, these records will get broken & replaced by better ones. Like the Chinese saying, “Yi4 Shan1 Zai4 Bi3 Yi4 Shan1 Gao1”, meaning that there is always another mountain taller than the one that someone claimed to be the tallest. This saying holds true & has stood the test of time over many centuries.

2) Unbelievably unfortunate incidents can happen at times

In this game of Monopoly, I encountered an extreme losing streak very early in the game. My dice rolled a ‘2’, landing me at Queen Astrid Park & I had to pay $50. Next, I rolled a ‘2’, landing me at a hotel at Geylang Road & I had to pay $250. Thereafter, I rolled another ‘2’, landing me at the next hotel at Serangoon road & I had to pay $450. Finally, my dice rolled a ‘1’, landing me at the pay income tax square, where I had to pay $200. So in total, I moved 7 steps in 4 turns & ended up paying a freaking scary $950 right near the beginning of the game! Argh! That has never happened to me before! Ever! Trust me, shit happens… sometimes. No one can ever be too sure of himself.

3) Investments (no matter how sensible they may seem), may not always pay off in the end

After losing a straight $950, my ‘real estate career’ in Monopoly began tumbling down the drain. It didn’t stop at the end of the drain, but went on flowing through the horrendously vigorous & slimy sewerage water. After continuing this fiesta of stumbling into houses & hotels, as well as many, many depressing ‘Chance’ & ‘Community Chest’ options that made me cough out even more money, I finally ended up in debt with the bank of $777.

Tired of this terribly continuous downward spiral, I came up with this interesting plan to borrow money from the bank to buy selected locations, so that I could gain a chance to earning back some income, in order to pay off my debts. I figured that it was quite an ingenious idea, as compared to waiting with my single one dollar note on my table (which Rebecca flipped to see if there were any other notes underneath) & waiting for those sickening ‘Chance’ & ‘Community Chest’ cards to give me some charity money. So I went ahead to buy two locations which I observed that Rebecca kept on stepping onto.

However, once I bought them, Rebecca only stepped on one of the locations ONCE & never ever step foot on them ever! I began losing & losing, till I was in heavy debt of $3,333. So I decided to mortgage these two miserable properties that I owned & pay back half of how much I paid to buy these two locations in the beginning. They ended up as terribly unsuccessfully investments that made me lose more money than gain any. In fact, I think I only earned $16, once! And call it freakily strange or what, but once I sold my properties… Rebecca began stopping by these locations once again… & again… for several repeated times! Aww! Argh!

4) Never borrow money when already in huge debt

All throughout my struggles to rise from humble beginnings & pay off my debt, not once did I manage to pay it off. In fact, my debt increased because I didn’t even have any means to earn any money from the very beginning I fell into a huge terrible amount of debt!

Thus, the lesson here is – Do not borrow when you know you can’t pay it off! Please don’t tell me that when you win, you will have the money to repay the loans. The word is not ‘when’, but ‘if’… IF you win… & win enough money first to cover all that you have previously put in to gamble, before having enough to repay what you had additionally borrowed! If you know you don’t have the means to pay… Don’t borrow!

Plus, most people who are addictive gamblers normally don’t have a stable job that allows them to earn a regular income while trying to squeeze out every coin that they have remaining to pay off their debts. In short, with the exception of a housing loan or car loan… don’t borrow, if you know that the chances are that you will have loads of problems paying it back!

Come on, ‘if’ is not really a trusted word to begin with…

5) God’s will always prevails in the end

I decided to set a ceiling of $5,000 debt that was allowed before any player would concede defeat. Upon reaching $4,650 in huge debt, I knew it was only more toss of the dice, before I lost this game. Why? There was a whole long row of owned properties right in front of me & Rebecca owned approximately 70% of the entire Monopoly locations! And guess what? She also owned 8 hotels & 3 houses, making her nothing short of a tyranny in this game.

Rebecca had wished & wished that she would have a chance to buy this location ‘Nassim Road’ ever since in the beginning of the game. All throughout the game, she never once stepped foot on that square, as she fervently saved up enough money to buy that location. And right before my last toss of the dice which would end my game right then & there, she managed to reach ‘Nassim Road’ & bought it & achieved her goal for her Nassim Road project! Argh!

True enough, in this last toss of the dice, I landed on another hotel & choked up a debt of $5,250 which exceeded the mutually agreed debt ceiling of $5,000. That was my last toss & my hope was to toss a number high enough to escape through the whole long row of owned properties. And despite getting the highest possible dice toss of ‘6’… I still couldn’t escape through that disastrous row of money-eating hotels… landing right on the last hotel… right at the end of that scary row of owned properties! There is no escape! That was my destiny! I was destined to lose in this game!

Call it merely a game of dice toss or God’s will, I reflected that sometimes in life, God’s will prevails in the end. For whatever reason that He destined me to lose this time round, nothing can escape His decision. Be it Jonah who got swallowed up by a big fish which returned him to land, or Job who had to suffer through a long duration of mourning & pain from the lost of everything that he had in his life… in the end, it is God’s will that will prevail. No doubt about it. It’s just that sometimes, we humans can be too ‘spiritually blind’ to see God’s reason for allowing something to happen… for a reason. But in time, we will understand… even if not while we are on Earth… perhaps when we get to Heaven.

It’s interesting how many lessons we can pick up from a simple game of Monopoly…