A different game than the one you thought you were playing
All American Girls Professional Baseball League player Marg Callaghan sliding into home plate as umpire Norris Ward watches in Opalocka, Florida, 1948 (Florida Department of Commerce collection)
I have always enjoyed card games and board games, from the long summer afternoons spent playing Spit and Spite & Malice with my siblings and cousins to the more recent winter evenings engaging in Euro-style games like Dominion, Catan, and 7 Wonders (again with siblings and cousins, plus friends and in-laws!). Within a game, you create a little world that is continually subjected to outside forces you must reckon with — a cozy version of actual life.
One of those outside forces is the constant distraction of your opponents from the task at hand. Oh, not your opponents? Well, count yourself lucky. My memories of turn-taking games from childhood include all of us desperately wailing, “Go!!!!!” at the person who was indecisive, tuned out, focused on other things, or just plain slow.
I’ve had my moments of being yelled at for taking too long on my turn. However, the company I keep these days is more civilized. There is a lot less yelling. At the same time, there are more real-world responsibilities that intrude into game-world: Kids, pets, phones, and teakettles, to name a few. Even when there is a lull in external interruptions, there is plenty of conversation. The result is that many games progress at an extremely leisurely pace. “Whose turn is it? Oh, it’s mine? Haha. Okay, let me see…”
Personally, I prefer a faster pace of game play. But at family get-togethers, the true purpose of playing games like these is the opportunity for simply being together, following whatever path and pace that takes. So even though I, as a person with no children, no pets, and no Snapchat, can easily stay focused on the game, the game I am actually playing is to hone my ability to be patient, friendly, and focused on the people. Then, the extended off-topic conversations are easily enjoyed. I can be amused instead of frustrated when an exuberant dog or toddler swishes pieces off of the board, and I don’t mind when the game remains incomplete at the end of the night. The important game was won.
Naturally, this is a metaphor we can extend to the rest of life:
Even though sleeping well and eating right are the game we want to be playing, sometimes the challenge before us is actually, “How do I make it through this day without good sleep or good food while still being kind to the people around me?”
We want to get where we’re going on time, but the game we’re really playing is to practice keeping our breathing steady and blood pressure stable when we’re hopelessly delayed by someone else’s traffic accident.
We’re trying to write the perfect essay, but discover that the key task before us is to figure out how to be okay with writing an imperfect one.
In struggling to grasp a concept in physics, we learn that to win the game, we have to do the unthinkable and ask for someone else’s help.
Whether the issue is that our plans for an idyllic beach vacation are foiled by rain or our plans for an idyllic retirement are foiled by cancer, the rules we live by may not work for the game we’re actually playing. The stories we’re telling ourselves about what it means to win or the ways we’re measuring our progress are as useless as using chess tactics when we’re playing cards. We have to adjust.
When we’re playing the real game, we may still feel sadness or discomfort, but we won’t be piling shame and frustration on top of that. We’ll be in the moment, dealing with whatever that moment brings up. We’ll have compassion for ourselves and for others. We may not be having the kind of fun or enjoyment that we thought we would, but we will experience the deeper satisfaction that comes from personal growth. Like it or not, I think we can be pretty sure that’s what this game of life is all about.
Your turn!