stuck in a pinball machine


Life in a pinball machine can be a rather rough life, closed within the four walls with God watching from the glass window above. Within, inescapable scrutiny, there are obstacles. Even then, one never gets to know what one is doing, being controlled at all time by plastic flippers.
One has to gather as many points as possible. That is the aim. For this, one has to bounce around aimlessly, since it is beyond one’s control to direct destiny. One cannot act on one’s conscience. One acts on the consciousness of God. To remain satisfied one has to either submit to this reality or be the one on the outside controlling the game.
People who will read this will know that when one lives in such a system, as in a pinball machine, one bounces around, initially in the momentum from the plunger, then gradually as the juice dries up, and the energy seeps away, one is inevitably pulled towards the black hole, interrupted only by the divine intervention of the flippers.
In between the closed walls of such a system, where the only way to score points is to leave it to fate, one really has very little to do. Such a game may thus be rather apt for goats and donkeys. For the rest of mankind, one really must have made a terrible mistake to end up here.
Or maybe, it is His penitentiary, His accumulated heap of sinners, congregated to get punished, bounced around, their livers jerking off their sins. But one cannot argue with the occasional high one gets when a magnet transiently pulls at the beginning of the month, points rapidly accumulating, but with time that initial euphoria dries out, withering away till the end of month into quivering movements – the tentative pushes and nudges of His flippers, to keep one in the game for another month.
Still, one is a man, and man has realizations, however inconsequential. And with this game of pinball one gets tired and God gets tired generally, and exit! The exit is the sweetest. Unlike cats, it is God who gets multiple chances, not us, not the irrelevant pinball. Brownie point for Him, against his rivals?

Dwaipayan Adhya

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