Life is not a game, but if it was, this is how to win.
Lessons from playing too much Catan
My best friend hates games.
Which feels problematic because my husband and I love them, alongside my sister, mother, brother, and the rest of our friend group (fishbowl anyone?). The type of game matters though. I tried to lure my husband into playing video games with me, only to find him asleep at the wheel as it were, softly snoring, with controller still in hand. But this summer, when my family piled into an unfurnished house near Lake Tahoe, he discovered his love of board games.
I don’t know how the simplicity of cardboard, cards, and dice beat out the wild ride that is Mario Kart, but we left our summer retreat forever changed. We are board game people now. Somewhere between competitive rounds with my soon to be sister-in-law, and trash talking in Polish with his own mother, something clicked into place. And for a while I found myself playing Catan every week with family and friends.
The game is simple enough, players collect resources based off dice rolls and build stuff to win. Easy. Catan is kind of like Monopoly but with more types of currency than cash. Every game the board comes apart and is reconfigured alongside your odds of victory. It is not as sophisticated per se as a game like chess, but I somehow find it more honest.
Luck undeniably plays a role and we do not always start on even footing. There is an unproductive part of the board, the desert, and a robber who will likely visit misfortune upon you at least once (especially if you have a sinister sister like me who is always out to get you).
This is not a sponsored post.
I write this because some of the most talented people I know are struggling with a board that feels stacked against them. For some, 2019 feels like the last time they didn’t wake up in the desert, while others have never seen a cactus up close. I know respectable humans with respectable jobs who have been visited by “the robber” and had their time, their health, or their dreams stolen. Nearly everywhere I look I find cacti and new travelers on the self-proclaimed struggle-bus (if you’re new here welcome, I’ve saved you a window seat).
Official media and government statistics spin a tale about an economy that has never been better, but if most of the participants in said economy do not agree, then what we need is a better measure of what it means to thrive. Combine that with our American mythology of merit and it becomes easy to blame the “losers” in an economy for being dealt a tragic hand.
Our life is not a chess board, black and white with equal pieces on all sides. We inherit a time, a place, advantages, and disadvantages, and sometimes — even despite our best efforts — we end up in the desert. Poet David Whyte talks about “the conversational nature of reality,” where what I want and what the world wants are in constant conversation with each other. My therapist would often use the illustration of riding an elephant through the jungle. There is the small part of us that chooses, a rather large and sometimes wild emotional interior that sometimes must be coaxed or persuaded, and there is also the jungle around us that must be negotiated.
Personally I like the elegance of Catan. We do not get to claim full causality for our good fortune, or receive full blame for our personal deserts. My old church would just call that grace. It is why the oldest book in the Judeo Christian bible is Job. The first lesson ancient humans needed to learn was sometimes life just sucks and thats ok. But in all cases, we still have to play our hand as best as we can.
Here is another nerdy reference to that point:
In Catan there is also one more interesting little feature, we do not play alone. Those who do not trade, interact, and help each other tend to have a more difficult time (it’s how my diabolical sister always keeps me from winning). But the robber eventually comes for us all, and the only way we survive the desert is by reaching for each other. The only way we make it through hard times, the only way to win when the board is stacked, the only way to live meaningfully while enjoying the blessing of good fortune, is by playing the game of life not as “I” but as “We.”
Love Notes to Little Things:
The Wild Robot…
I have seen this film twice this week (two out of the last three days) and fully plan on seeing it again before the weekend. Watch this trailer. Bring tissues and a heart that is ready to grow three sizes. One of the themes in the movie is how “kindness is a survival skill.” And how it looks so naive at first, but as illustrated in our best moments as humans (read A Paradise Built in Hell), we know that kindness, and love, while not always the popular choice are the great treasures of the human spirit. I will probably do a whole post about this movie later so go see if before I ruin it with spoilers.
My friends and I carved some pumpkins this week. All of us are adults with busy schedules, but managed to steal one evening back from monotony and the weight of the world. Joy shared is not a fruitless endeavor. Gather and make memories. It is always worth it.
Great Reads:
I Worried
Mary OliverI worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Stay tender and stay true lovebugs.
Warmest regards from the gutter,
Dakota
I love Catan!