Brave Little Chicken
The age old question, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” appears to have a simple answer.
To get to the other side.
But isn’t it so much more than that?
The chicken isn’t merely trying to get to the other side. He’s trying to muster the energy, courage, and motivation to move forward each and every day.
For a chicken to cross a road, he has to be brave and determined. He has to know he’s putting his life at risk, but he also has to know the reward of achieving his main goal.
All of this occurred to me the other day when, on my eight, ninth, tenth…(I lost count)…attempt to earn a new top score on Crossy Road, I saw the brave little chicken as a miniature version of me.
Crossy Road is an “8-bit endless arcade hopper” in which taps on the screen moves a small chicken across a never ending series of roads. But it’s not just a road. Sometimes it’s an eight-lane highway with cars going in both directions.
Sometimes it’s one quite lane where a dump truck comes out of nowhere. Other times it’s a train track, or a raging river with logs that the chicken must jump on to get across.
Sometimes there’s a mud mire with a single, safe lily pad, or, if the little chicken wastes time, a screaming eagle flies overhead and snatches him up.
It’s a simple game that is simultaneoulsy nerve-wracking and relaxing. It’s also incredibly meta. This little chicken’s life is riddled with danger. Jump too fast and get squashed. Jump too slow or not out of the way, get smashed. Catch the wrong log, get swallowed up by the raging rapids. Stand on the tracks too long and get run over by a speeding train.
Once the chicken dies, he starts all the way back at the beginning, back at zero.
And this is where Crossy Road is a metaphor for life. We have to start every day from the same beginning. We have to try to improve incrementally and keep moving forward. We have to face danger and simply focus on making it to the other side of whatever adversity we are facing. Sometimes this is one careful step at a time. Other times, it’s hectic jumping in all directions. And other times, it’s simply running like hell and not looking back.
But the bottom line of all is that we have to do what we have to do with tact and skill, and not be a chicken about it.
Isn’t that what life is? Not being a chicken.
◊♦◊
Photo by Ashes Sitoula on Unsplash
