It has occurred to me lately that life is one great big game. I love history and find myself sometimes in the stories of old. I have been traveling with my wife of 37 years with close friends to the Highlands of Scotland meeting family and other friends along the way. Now, that is a land of events that have changed history forever! How about those McDonald’s and Cambel’s! The McDonald’s were massacred in Glencoe region because they were too slow to claim allengence to William of Orange. Ok, I may be historically challenged but makes the Hatfield and McCoy dispute look tame. What about those Jacobites and Rob Roy? Research the life and challenges of Scotland’s family histories if interested. Even my own last name is linked with the ancient clans of Scotland. I believe we are led by our desires to seek the unknown and devine guidance to point us into our own historical storyline. It is a game! The Wars of the Roses was a series of wars for control of the throne of England. They were fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet, those of Lancaster and York. Did you know the war of roses is where the author of the game of thrones got his inspiration? There is a lot of parallels between the Lancaster and York families in the English history and those of the fictional series. Lannister is to Lancaster as Stark is to York. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin is an exciting twist of fiction and facts to make history come alive in our imaginations. I will leave to your own explorations for further discoveries. Did you know early American patriats battled barbaric tribes of Muslim pirates along the Barbary coast in North Africa before we even had a formalized navy? Also, will leave that up to you to discover fundamental truths that history does indeed repeat itself. It is all a game of life. It did not matter that Henry VIII had a daughter to carry on his lineage. He wanted a son and was determined to revise traditional values to suit his purpose. The world have fought battles for centuries on some of these revisions. What does that have to do with the here and now? As human beings in the game of life, we move along the flow and swept into history. We should strive to keep our values pure and our traditions unchanged but the course of history is full of events out of our personal control. I believe it is how we handle the changes as they come that make the difference in our lives. Afterall, it is all in the game. I pray you get in the game of life and not simply float along the tides of change only to wake up one day saying what happened?
T