Life is Like a Bingo Card

While the madness ensues and I am bouncing between tearfulness and anger daily, I decided to stop and take a look at human civilizations over the centuries. This round of authoritarianism, I found, was a replay from so many that came before it. I also ruminated on the chance of it rising again. Was it a roll of the dice or the luck of a bingo ball that formulated our democracy? That paved the pathway of our lives? What can we do?

Let’s look at a game of chance as an illustration.  The game of bingo and the bingo card for example. There is the gift in the middle space, we cross out that gift and all the rest of the spaces on the card are up for grabs. Let’s imagine the corner spaces are our family and genes, our education, our financial stability, and lastly, our environment. The rest of the spaces on the bingo card of life are random. We’ll just leave those to what we bump into or create in this life. Let’s also assume that we were not born into the lap of luxury and privilege.

The first corner we look at will be family and genes. If in that space we have inherited epigenetic traumatic stress and reactions, or we face real life family trauma as children, our brains can develop the fight, flight or hide reactions as the primary means of facing challenges. We do not learn the same as other children who are more fortunate and we begin our life and our bingo card with very big challenges because we do not process knowledge as effectively. We are also often fearful and anxious. That knocks out a whole segment of our bingo card of life. One cornerstone down.

Now let’s move to education. If we grow up in a traumatic environment, or one with socio-economic difficulties, food scarcity, homelessness, or lack of appropriate healthcare, then education becomes impacted. Education will fall behind just trying to obtain meals, health care, clothing, a roof over our heads or merely getting the children to school. It will not be priority. Sadly, the outcome is another life cornerstone that is dysfunctional and another essential bingo card space not available to us.

The third cornerstone of the bingo card of life represents financial security. This challenge plays a huge role in all the corners. Sadly, our society is based on the dollar and not having enough of them yields bad outcomes. These issues affect having enough food, a roof over our heads, and a developing future. Income also affects our transportation, our entertainment, the schools we attend, or if we attend at all.  Things are not looking good in this bingo game of life.

Now let’s look at the final corner of our bingo card, the environment. People who are underprivileged or have lower incomes often live in areas where the environment is negatively impacted by bad air quality and water pollution. An example of this is lead poisoning of children from paint and pipes. Infrastructure that has not been maintained because home values and taxation are low. Finally, one of the biggest challenges facing us right now is climate change. The weather, tides, earthquakes and general environmental instability are killing entire species that are essential for balancing the ecosystem.

As we have shown, all four corners of our card are impossible to utilize in the game of life for all the aforementioned challenges. So where does that leave us? Can we build the resilience we need to win? As dark as all the above appears, remember the bingo card has several other lines and spaces that we could fill. There are also multiple forms of bingo that allow things like “L” shapes, the numbers that surround the middle free space, other letter shapes, a “blackout game” where all spaces are used up, a postage stamp 2X2 designated square on the card, a horizontal row that bypasses the corners or other crazy things the bingo caller says are the rules of that particular version of the game. Life has bypasses, alternate routes and supports also. My point here is there is hope, even with all the challenges we are facing in our country and in our world.

Assess yourself for what brings you joy, connection, peace and hope those things will help you build resilience in traumatic times such as what we currently face. I am not being a Pollyanna here, this is research based (not the bingo analogy, of course, but the challenges themselves). We can find ways out of the darkness and we can find others who feel as we do. Remember our domains of well-being? To refresh your memory they are identity, connectedness, security, autonomy, meaning and joy. Anyone can grow these to create more well-being in life. They are the foundations of resilience. Grow these domains and you will be a winner in the bingo game of life.

If you have questions, need resources or help visit our website at https://asandyplace.com/ or email me at sandy@asandyplace.com.

Yours in well-being,

Sandra (Sandy) Place