The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (PC)

My children loved this game. It was an interactive computer game that was played out by writing instructions. If you gave good ones, the programme would respond. If you gave bad ones, the programme would ignore you. My girls learned to navigate the story quite quickly, and learned, when they came up against a tricky situation that might cause the game to end, to save the story to the point just before it happened.

Douglas Adams had a very unique mind. His radio plays were adapted as books, a television series, a movie, and the above-mentioned computer game.

If anything, I suspect he was an alien sent to Earth to show us how ridiculous we humans are.

There was one spot in the interactive game that always caused the story to end. It was having to make a choice of two liquids.

Tea or No Tea

My memory was a bit rusty, so I asked my younger daughter, Rosanna, what the issue was. She reminded me that either choice was wrong. In fact, the game would come to an end if you chose either one.

For a long time, Rosanna puzzled this out, until she hit upon a likely solution.

Both Tea and No Tea

This instruction allowed the game to continue, and Rosanna played right through to the end. (This was in 1993, when she was just 13.)

Conclusion

There really is only one way to get through life unscathed. Instead of choosing one side or the other (right wing/left wing), choose both. This might seem counterintuitive since we are taught from our earliest moments that there is ‘right’ and there is ‘wrong’ and we must choose ‘wisely’. But the ability to hold two conflicting points of view as both equally valid is the sign of a spiritually mature individual.