Snakes and Ladders

What's the name of the game that we are playing

Dress: Details | Sunglasses: Aldo | Belt: Chanel | Shoes: Zara | Accessories: Charriol

Is it gonna go on like this forever
Are we gonna to take that last step together
Going round and round and up and down
Feels just like snakes and ladders

Deviating from the rather safe assurance a leopard print gives when it comes to wearing animal prints, I decided to take a risk, by trading in my spots, this time for a lovely chiffon snake print dress I got about a year ago and, buried in my closet along with most of my new clothes, only got to wear now. I admit it is a very risque print to wear and usually I would not venture into the plunge it takes to wear the design, but granted  I am very much into challenges right now, I went on with my day and decided to rock it. The dress has a beautiful '70s vibe to it, which was why I bought it. It reminded me so much of the dresses my mom used to keep (and on certain occasions, lend me) from her teenage dream years. Great silhouette, risque print and nature inspired hues were the three main elements which pushed me to wear this dress for a very important business meeting, and since I was all about the '70s already, I cinched it with a vintage leather belt and added a pair of over-sized sunglasses to further add to the earth angel vibe.

Now how do I relate this outfit to my life? For one, I am not a snake. I am actually perhaps so far from it, given I am not flexible and I am so consistent, I do not change my colors or shed skin. So let me dive into the song and popular game that semi-inspired my outfit: Snakes and Ladders. The Game of Life. I am quite sure everyone has at one point rolled the dice, climbed a ladder, spiraled down a snake. If you were me, raised in an ultra religious household, the snakes and ladders board game I played as a kid came in the form of virtues and vices. Do a good deed and climb a ladder, commit a sin and go down the snake. It is very much like life, what, with the constant ups and downs, the easy rise to the top and how in a roll of one dice, you can go down to ground zero even when you are at the topmost level. It's all about chances and luck. What I always loved about it is the fact that I guess the game just validates the fact that I always believed in the saying the higher you are, the harder you fall. For every snake, there is a ladder; for every ladder,a snake. You play, you win, you play, you lose. But then you keep on playing, rolling the dice, hoping for the best. It makes sense, especially since in life, the constant thing is that you rise or you fall. 

 An author I look up to said it best when describing the game. He goes, "All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner; and for every snake, a ladder will compensate. But it's more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is the unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega...and the polarities of knees and nose ... but I found, very early in my life, that the game lacked one crucial dimension, that of ambiguity - because, as events are about to show:
 it is also possible to slither down a ladder and climb to triumph on the venom of a snake ..."

 At the end of the day, it’s not the number of ladders or snakes that you face in your life that will determine your fate. Sure, you might like to pause for a moment to recharge the batteries, or even have a little cry, but then, persist, persist, persist... and on the way learn, learn, learn from your mistakes or misfortunes. Your future in the game of life is determined by one thing, and one thing only – MOVEMENT. Just keep moving ever forward. Don’t stop at the foot of a snake and throw away the dice. Just keep moving. Get up again, and keep moving.

xx, JL