Four Bears

When I want to mull over various story ideas, I have a game I play on the computer. It's fairly mindless, yet requires more thought than say, solitaire. In the game, I'm establishing a colony in a new land, competing against other explorers who are also establishing colonies. We have to explore, locate resources, collect treasures, build our towns, and so forth.

Treasures are guarded by treasure guardians. And the worth of the treasure is usually directly related to how many "guardians" you have to eliminate to collect the treasure. If the explorer isn't strong enough, the guardians will wound him so bad he can't fight until his town ransoms him. That's pretty much like real life, isn't it? The more valuable the goal to us, the more work involved to achieve it.

Some of the most difficult treasures in the game have four bears guarding them. One way to defeat the bears is simply to wait until you're far enough in the game that your explorer is "strong" enough to defeat all the bears. Of course, by then the treasure might be gone. One of the other explorers might have collected it.

Or...the explorer can get help. He can gather a few soldiers to help him defeat the bears and collect the treasure.

A lot of time in life, we insist on collecting the treasure all on our own. We refuse the assistance we need. And we end up knocked out of the game.

How many bears are you fighting?

anny