Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur Life Lessons
This piece detailing the game Snakes and Ladders got me to reflect upon one of my own favorite childhood games popular during the 1980s and 1990s. This was Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur.
Sadly, the game is no longer in production. But if you can get your hands on a vintage model, the ground rules are simple. Following the likes of Snakes and Ladders, Candy Land, Parchesi, and numerous others, players roll the dice to move pieces to the board center. But if your dice lands on a dinosaur, then all players beware. A large rolling dinosaur is wound up and let loose to zoom around the board, knocking over numerous pawns and sending them back to start. Let’s consider some life lessons this game might teach us.
Yep, Life Can Be UnFair
And you thought Snakes and Ladders was cruel? This game sends you back to the start if you are knocked over by the big red(or green) dinosaur. It’s much like Super Mario Bros where perhaps you almost got to the castle but ran right into the mad mushroom-thingy after already losing your firepower and height.
Yes, life is that unfair. Those dizzy dinosaurs come in all shapes and sizes to knock our life paths off course. Someone works decades at a company to one day find their position has been cut. A couple shares their lives raising children, paying off a mortgage, and keeping ties with numerous family and friends until one day they realize that their marriage doesn’t work. Goodness, how many countless lives were lost to the horrible COVID-19 pandemic?
But in life, even if you get knocked down and sent back to start then you can begin anew. Sometimes those dizzy dinosaurs take away things that cannot ever be restored. Perhaps there is a transformation that does take place in a spiritual sense. But in so many senses, the deeper loss remains. is as William Wordsworth so eloquently expressed.
Splendour in the Grass
What though the radiance
which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass,
of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind
To Reach the Mountain Top
In Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur, the players are trying to make it to the mountain top. That’s the end goal, though the journey may be hard. How reassuring that the mountaintop parallels so nicely with human life. Each of us may strive to reach that mountaintop. As Maslow postulated, self-actualization is the highest of human needs. Though that mountaintop may take on different forms for each of us. For some, it is that lifelong service in a career or service role. For others, it is a successful marriage or seeing one’s children succeed in life. For others still, it may be overcoming the monsters haunting them from past traumas, addictions, or horrible transgressions committed.
Whatever our life’s final goals may be, the path will not be as well-established as the game’s spaces. And as we have already discussed, many different factors may threaten to knock us off course completely. However, doesn’t that make life more interesting and exciting then? As we cannot know or control most things, we can continue to find ourselves humbled and in awe at the unbounded mystery and beauty of life, tapping into the infinite riches unfolding each second to help guide us along life’s way.
What If We Are the Dizzy Dinosaur?
Yes, we can certainly see that life presents each of us with obstacles and negative factors — all those dizzy dinosaurs. But what if the main antagonist is none other than ourselves? What if our actions and decisions inadvertently become negative factors?
Well, isn’t that one of the marvelous things about resilience? No matter what the challenge or negative factor, it can be overcome. How amazing it is that our worst mistakes or misdeeds can be transformed into stepping stones to help move us forward. Remember one of Anne Frank’s prodigious reflections was “How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before starting to improve the world?” Does that not start with improving ourselves?
And so we have reflected on another famous children’s game. Though we have mined striking insights, we have hardly scratched the surface of what life lessons Dizzy Dizzy Dinosaur can offer. What other lessons can we learn from a game with a few pawns and a mobile wind-up dinosaur taking a larger-than-life space in children’s imaginations? Certainly, the sky is the limit for the number of times the dice can be rolled here.
