Connecting the Dots

Making sense out of a random series of events that is our life

- Smt. Sujatha Rao

Dots and Boxes

Most of us would have played the game known as dots and boxes with a simple rule that whoever ends up connecting the dots to make a box in a grid gets a point. The game ends when no more lines can be formed, and the person with the most points becomes the winner.

This uncomplicated game was published in the 19th century by a French mathematician, Edouard Lucas and has since crossed the borders across the world to become one of the most common games played before the advent of online games. Now we have quite a few online versions of the same game over multiple apps. The appeal of the game lies in its sheer simplicity.

This game made me wonder how nice it would be if we could have something similar in life where we could connect our multifarious experiences to make the desired shapes out of those. If only we could draw lines and make one thing connect to the other in neat lines, wouldn't life be simpler!

Steve Jobs

I sighed realising life is so much more complex with a whole lot of variables out of our control. That's when I remembered the following popular quote about connecting the dots by Steve Jobs:

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.