BackInBox

Here's the great lesson. This is an analogy that I heard for the first time many years ago from James Dobson. It reminded me of playing Monopoly. I used to play Monopoly with my grandmother when I was growing up. She was a wonderful woman, a great storyteller and a really fun person. We loved her very much, but... she was the most ruthless Monopoly player I have ever met in my life! Imagine that Donald Trump had married Leona Helmsley, and they had had a child. You have some idea of what my grandmother was like when I played Monopoly against her.

I would get my little cache of play money and want to hang on to it, but my grandmother knew how to play the game. She knew that money is how you keep score in this game, and that acquisition is like your debt_____ it's life or death. So, she would buy every piece of property

that she landed on. She would mortgage each property to the hilt so she could buy everything else. She knew that it was dog-eat-dog, every man for himself. Inevitably, she would become the "Master of the Board." I would land on her property once too often and have to give her my last dollar and quit in utter defeat. She would always shake her head and say,

Don't worry about it, Johnny, some day you'll learn how to play the game. I hated it when she said that to me.

Then one summer, I played almost every day with a kid in our neighborhood named Steve. That was the summer when it gradually dawned on me how to play the game. That summer, I learned that money was how you kept score in this game, and that acquisition is the key to survival. It's every man for himself That summer, I learned to be the "Master of the Board."

By the time the fall rolled around, I was ready to do whatever it took to beat my grandmother. I was more ruthless than she was. I played with sweaty palms. I was ready to cheat if I needed to in order to beat my grandmother at Monopoly. Slowly, cunningly, I exposed the soft underbelly of my grandmother's weakness. (That's a memorable image, isn't it?) Relentlessly, inexorably, I drove her off the board. The game does strange things to you.

I can still remember when it happened. It was at "Marvin Gardens." I looked at my grandmother, who was an old lady by then. She was a widow. She had raised six children, raised my mom, loved my mom. She loved me. She taught me how to play the game. I took everything she had. I destroyed her financially and psychologically. I watched her give me her last dollar and quit in utter defeat. It was the greatest moment of my life.

Then she had one more thing to teach me. I had one more lesson to learn. The great lesson always comes at the end of the game. She said,

Now, Johnny, it all goes back in the box.

This is "The Lesson of the Box." It's by a theologian by the name of Jerry Seinfeld:

To me if life boils down to one significant thing, it's movement. To live is to keep moving. Unfortunately, this means for the rest of our lives, we're going to be looking for boxes. When you 're moving, your whole world is boxes. That 's all you think about. Boxes. Where are the boxes? You wander down the. street, going in and out of stores. Are there boxes here? Have you seen any boxes? That 's all you think about.

You could be at a funeral. Everyone around you is mourning, crying. You 're looking at the casket. That's a nice box. Anybody know where that guy got that box? When he 's done with it, you think I could get it? It has some nice handles on it. My stereo would fit right in there. I mean that's what death is, really. The last big move of your life. The hearse is like the van.

The pallbearers are your close friends, the only ones you could ask to help you with a big move like that. And the casket is that great, perfect box you've been looking for your whole life long. When the game is over, it 's all going back in the box."