The Game of Living: Are You Playing?

Growing up, I was very much a games nerd. I still am, really.

I played everything, from role playing games, like AD&D and Harnmaster, to the classics, like Risk and Monopoly, to complex simulation games, like Rise and Decline of the Third Reich and Squad Leader. I played a lot of Warhammer 40K and Blood Bowl too. These days Settlers of Catan is the go-to choice.

I was such a games nerd that I often bought games I didn’t expect to play because I enjoyed learning the rules. Sometimes, after reading the rules of a game, I decided the game wasn’t worth playing, even if I had paid money for it.

From one perspective, it seems like my life up to this point can be characterized as an effort to learn, consider, and understand the rules of the game of living. The decision I face, now that I’ve learned the rules, is whether or not the game is worth playing.

Are there any other game nerds out there? How do you think games have impacted your life?

Imagining the Worst Is Such An Easy Thing To Do.

The audience of his peers had transformed into a righteous mob and it could smell his uncertainty. The presenter, after a shaky and uneven talk, had not provided a strong response to the first question posed to him and — even worse — had become defensive all too quickly.

The next person’s question was a thinly veiled attack. Again, the presenter wavered and, very quickly, the Q & A turned into a verbal stoning.

It was academia at its worst and, sadly, even at its best, post-presentation Q & As are rarely much more edifying.

Eventually, after the pillaging was almost intolerable to watch, a kind soul intervened and tried to help, offering the presenter a very friendly and easy question, recasting his position in a much more charitable light.

But it was too late. He was now in survival mode and he responded with hostility.

The kind soul patiently sidestepped the hostility and restated her question, clearly indicating that she was on his side.

He couldn’t make sense of her intentions. He couldn’t hear the intended meaning of her words. He heard only the palatable hostility of the mob and he attacked again.

The kind soul shrugged, she rephrased her question, and took his out eye with it. The verbal stoning continued brutally until the presenter’s time was up.

This little anecdote is based, sadly, on a true story but, in case it wasn’t clear, I should say I wasn’t the presenter (nor the kind soul).

Last weekend, however, I finally realized how easily I can slip into a negative outlook that makes it very difficult for me not to interpret the actions of another person and — in particular her words — in a way which only confirms my own insecurities.

As unhelpful as that particular outlook may be and, as much as it may be a detriment to my own well being, it in itself is not the worst bit.

Unfortunately, at some point, I will respond negatively to the negativity I’ve imparted to the other person’s words and actions, and, if she challenges me on my reading of her text, I will then argue that she is — in fact — wrong and that she must have meant what I thought she meant all along — even if she denies it now.

I should also point out that I made a living for some time — however meagre — rooting out the “hidden” meanings of various texts and vigorously presenting my case to my learned peers. I can only imagine that it must suck rather tremendously to have someone you care about vigorously presenting the case that you think much less of him than you actually think and that you are much more negative than you actually are.

I’ve used the feminine pronoun self-consciously because it seems that this all encompassing and almost inescapable negative perspective most often — and perhaps only — kicks in when I’m feeling uncertain and insecure about someone with whom I am romantically involved. Whether the broader pattern is there or not, in this case, it is the bare fact of the matter.

I have some theories about the origins of this negative habit, ranging from Freudian-esque family psycho dramas to Pavlovian state-dependent memories rooted in adolescence to undigested pieces of potato, but, I really don’t think the secret origins of the behaviour matter all that much. It’s shitty and irresponsible and I need to change it — whether it exists because I was loved too much, too little or because I watched the wrong kind of television growing up.

Fortunately for me, unlike that presenter, my kind soul didn’t shrug her shoulders and join the hostile mob of my own imagination but instead patiently made the case that my behavior was unfounded, unprovoked, and unacceptable. Once I had a clear mind again, because of that irrefutable kindness and patience, and after some hard thinking, I was able to identify the problem and now that I’ve identified it, I can work on changing it.

Thanks, kind soul.

From Bad To Good: All At Once And Of A Sudden.

I watched the two old naked guys emerge from their normal spot under the trees, cross the sand, and dive into the surf. After a quick dip, they emerged from the sea with broad smiles and walked slowly back to the shaded spot from whence they had come.

I had been coming to Little Palm Beach — a clothing optional beach — for six or seven months now.

“Man, those guys have got it figured out. They hang out on the beach all day, take a swim when they want to, and do whatever they want. What a life! I wish I had their life.”

I shifted on my beach towel to get more comfortable and to better facilitate my tanning.

Pause, two three.

“Wait a minute. I have their life.”

I had moved to Waiheke Island in the early spring, a fifty minute bus and ferry ride from downtown Auckland, because I had found — thanks to my girlfriend of the time — an inexpensive flat in which to live not far from Little Palm Beach. It was the perfect place for the final long hard push to get my thesis done.

I worked tirelessly for four months on my thesis, went to the beach for my breaks, and, late at night, I drank red wine, eat popcorn, and stubbornly read Ulysses. If I wanted to, I could get to the city easily and, when I wasn’t visiting her, my girlfriend could visit me.

Then, after I submitted my thesis, I had enough savings to continue working on my other writing, going to the beach, etc. I was living in an introverted paradise and, until that very moment, I hadn’t realized it.

Sure, by no means was my life perfect.

My relationship with my girlfriend was often rocky, the looming deadline had been a source of stress, nevertheless, if I had looked at my life from a different perspective, I would have seen that I was leading exactly the kind of life I had always wanted! I was waking up when I wanted, working when I wanted, on what I wanted, and tanning on a clothing optional beach in the time between.

And it was only in that moment, when I saw my life reflected in the utopian life of those old guys, that I really and finally got the so often spoken cliché about the importance of perspective.

Yes, yes, I know we’ve all heard it before but until you’ve actually had the experience of your entire world spinning on its axis, you don’t really get it. And yes, yes, for many people, there is no perspective from which the brute fact of their misery will be transmogrified into a half-full happiness, however, for most for us in the ridiculously wealthy West, we live nowhere near the threshold of absolute misery. There is, I think, really no plausible reason for any of us to look upon our lives with a half-full gaze.

Have you ever had the experience when — all at once and of a sudden — you realized that this moment, event, or life was much better — or worse — than it had previously seemed?

 

An Important Piece of The Puzzle: The Words Matter, Inside and Out.

The words we use affect us, whether we are describing our own behaviour or the behaviour of others, whether we are using our inside voice or outside voice.

I learned this important insight in New Zealand, thanks to a short introductory seminar to the methodology of the Virtues Project, taught by two of its founders.

The explicit aim of the seminar was to teach parents and teachers how to teach their children and students to be virtuous; however, whether the instructors intended it or not, it seemed to me, in actual fact, the aim of the seminar was to provide the parents and teachers with the kind of moral education they should have received as children.

It makes sense: a person can’t teach what s/he has not herself learnt and, unfortunately, most people are never taught how to lead virtuous lives or how to teach children to live virtuous lives.

Although many of the seminar’s group exercises made my introverted nature cringe, the main teaching point stuck: we help promote virtuous behaviour in children when we use a rich, expressive, and positive vocabulary to reward and promote that behaviour, instead of calling attention to the bad behaviour. E.g. “Be generous” vs. “don’t be greedy”.

Conceptually, the claim makes a lot of sense: being generous is not the same as not being greedy. Empirically, it also seems to be the case that we are better able to reproduce specific behaviours when they are shown to us and we are encouraged to visualize ourselves doing them. In other words, helping children identify and mimic virtuous behaviour is much more likely to promote it than calling attention to the bad behaviour they should not mimic.

I can’t remember when or why I decided to adopt something like this approach for my inner monologue but, at some point, I realized that it constantly and consistently assessed my behaviour (and the behaviour of others) in a fashion that was wholly negative. Easily, 95% of the critical evaluations offered by my inner monologue were negative: “How could you be so stupid? Don’t be an asshole! Don’t fuck up?! Why are you such a loser? Don’t be a coward!” Etc, etc.

Realizing this, I decided to retrain my inner monologue in the spirit of what I had learned from the Virtues Project. Accordingly, I carefully scrutinized it and whenever I caught myself using negative language to describe my behaviour (or the behaviour of others), I stopped the train of thought in its tracks and took a moment to figure out a way to rephrase the critical observation in language more consistent with the approach of the Virtues Project. “Don’t be stupid”, for example, could become any number of positive expressions depending on the context: “be conscientious; be patient; be thoughtful; be open-minded;” etc.

Before long — and in much less time than I expected — my inner monologue adopted and employed the richer, positive language without any further reflective prompting on my part. Now, it is quite exceptional when I employ the old negative language and long gone are the days when I would ruthlessly attack myself over and over again for the most minor of errors. The overall consequence, I think, is that I’m a lot happier.

Upon reflection, this makes a lot of sense. It’s easy (I hope) to recognize that a constant barrage of negative language, however well intentioned, will interfere with a person’s ability to be happy when it comes from someone else. It was hard — for me at least — to make the connection to the constant barrage of negative language used by my inner monologue. Fortunately, I eventually learned that my inner monologue could be retrained to employ thoughtful, insightful, and positive language instead.

I encourage you to spend some time monitoring your inner monologue and tracking the kind of language it employs — particularly when you make an error. I’m hopeful that your inner voice is positive most of the time. If isn’t, I also want to assure you that it can be retrained.

A Variant On Pascal’s Wager: You’ve Got Nothing To Lose When You Address Your “Minor” Hardships.

I suspect, when people finally learn that Charles Foster Kane had whispered on his death bed the name of a long lost sled, some thought, “is that it? A sled? Really?”

I’ve noticed that people frequently react in this fashion to the sources of their own sadness, hurt, or anger: “Is that it? That? Really?”

This reaction probably originates in an otherwise reasonable short term coping mechanism. By downplaying the intensity of a harm it may be easier to endure the harm. However, based on my own experience, I think this coping mechanism, if employed in the long term, also becomes an obstacle to full recovery.

This happens, I think, because of a curious bit of reasoning: “Sure, that experience was bad but it wasn’t that bad. There are other people who have endured much worse than me. So, I don’t really deserve — or have the right — to feel that bad about my experience because other people have had much worse experiences.”

It’s as if the only person who is entitled to address the negative feelings caused by his or her hardships is exactly that person who has suffered more than any other person in the world.

When this absurd conclusion became apparent to me, I decided to frame the question of whether or not we should address our negative feelings from the other extreme: why isn’t every negative feeling, whatever the source, worthy of our concern, consideration, and attention? Whether one feels cranky because of a poor sleep or because one’s spouse is emotionally abusive, shouldn’t the negative feelings caused by both of these situations be addressed in some kind of constructive fashion?

The answer is, I think, “yes; yes, it should be.”

I say this for two reasons.

First, a person can only die from a thousand paper cuts, if s/he ignores each cut as it happens. Similarly, and by analogy, a car will eventually break down if its day-to-day maintenance is ignored.

Second, if the negative feelings caused by supposedly inconsequentially harms really are minor, you should be able to attend to them quickly and easily.

In other words, you really have nothing to lose if you address your negative feelings — however minor you take them to be — and a lot to gain if I am correct.
 

Before Good and Evil: A Feeling Needs No Justification.

I wonder at what point in human history we started to evaluate whether or not our feelings should exist and whether or not we should express them.

For example, when did we start thinking and saying, “I don’t have a right to feel the way I feel”  or “I have no reason to feel this way” or “I am overreacting.”

I suppose it’s possible that, as long as we’ve lived in close proximity to each other, we’ve evaluated whether or not it is appropriate to have a feeling or to express it but I doubt it. I suspect it’s a fairly recent phenomenon — particularly from the long lens of evolution.

At minimum, we can probably agree, at some point in human history, we would not have wondered if it was right or wrong for us to have a feeling or to express it. We would not have weighed reasons for and against the existence of a feeling and its expression. We would not have wondered if we had a right to a particular feeling or a right to express it. Clearly, children don’t, until they are taught to do so, and long before we were thinking beings, we were feeling beings.

From my perspective, a feeling exists or it doesn’t exist. The question of warrant is irrelevant. We don’t need a reason or a right to have a feeling. No burden of proof needs to be met. It either exists or it doesn’t exist. There are, of course, reasons for and against the expression of a feeling in any given circumstance but those reasons have no bearing on the question of whether or not a feeling exists.

For example, under normal circumstances, it’s probably not right to yell at a parent over Christmas dinner for taking a cherished toy from you when you were young. In fact, it might not ever be warranted for you to express to your parent directly the anger for this particular transgression. It is nevertheless unobjectionable for you to be angry about the event and to choose to experience the anger in some other context, even if the parent is a generally loving and supportive person.

In my own life, I know I often prevented myself from experiencing certain feelings because I didn’t think I really had the right to feel them. In some instances, I avoided experiencing certain feelings because it seemed that if I experienced an “unwarranted” feeling, that would be a kind of wrong in and of itself. In other instances, I avoided experiencing certain feelings because I thought the causes of those feelings weren’t nearly as serious as they ought to be. Whatever the reason, whenever I decided a feeling had no right to exist, it meant the feeling was never fully experienced and I missed the opportunity to heal and learn from it.

I write all this because I’m fairly certain other people are struggling with this very same issue. If you are, my suggestion is this: if you ever find yourself thinking that one of your feelings has no right to exist or telling yourself you have no right to experience a feeling, distinguish between the existence of the feeling and how you choose to react to the existence of that feeling. Feelings exist and, in most cases, probably need to be experienced in some way. There are better and worse ways to experience the feeling but the existence of the feeling does not need to be defended or justified — it needs only to be experienced.

Crying 101: It Helps You Feel Better.

I like to cry.

Generally, I cry because I’m a softy and I have heart strings that are easily pulled. I also cry because crying always makes me feel better when my given circumstances, my choices, or the choices of others cause me to feel poorly.

You will, however, probably never see me cry because I don’t like the way people react to crying.

I don’t want to be asked what’s wrong. I don’t want to be soothed. I don’t want sympathy. I don’t want to be cheered up. I don’t want my feelings witnessed or validated. I don’t want to be hugged or stroked. I don’t want to be distracted. I want to experience the feeling. I want to cry.

I wasn’t always pro-crying.

Up until my early twenties, I did everything in my power not to cry whether I was in public or not. And even after I started allowing myself to cry, it took me many more years to figure out that crying is in fact a good thing. I don’t remember a specific moment when it finally clicked but, at some point, I stopped resisting, started feeling, and realized that crying helped me feel better.

I can’t guarantee crying will help everyone to be happy but, I suspect, people who can’t or won’t cry are more likely to be unhappy more of the time. I can say that with some confidence because I was once one of those people.

A Lesson From Paradise: Eat, Drink, and Feel Sadness!

A few years ago, I accidentally stumbled upon a very specific process that helped me sort my shit out. It still does.

Currently, my friend Nadine is trying to sort her shit out. I can’t be certain my process will be of any use to her but it might be and, if not her, maybe, someone else will find it useful. Moreover, explaining how the process works and how I discovered it will only help my own understanding of it.

So, here we go.

When I was in the final months of finishing my PhD thesis, I was very lucky to end up living a short walk from Little Palm Beach on Waiheke Island in New Zealand. Because I had set myself the more or less impossible task of pretty much restarting my thesis from scratch, with the deadline six months away, I realized, in order to avoid imploding in a flurry of reading, writing, and editing, I would need to dedicate some part of each day to not working on the thesis or thinking about it.

Eventually, I decided — sensibly enough — that beach time would be a no-thesis-thinking-zone. Accordingly, while I basked in the sun and swam in the surf, I carefully policed my thoughts. If I caught myself thinking about any aspect of my thesis — however minor — I forced myself to think of something else.

Fortunately, a pristine, beautiful, and clothing-optional beach was a pretty good place to distract my brain from a thesis. Eventually, at some point, I’m not even sure when, after many months of my brain sneaking thesis-thinking into my stream of consciousness by any means necessary and me saying, “nein!”, it stopped trying. Unbeknownst to me, it had learned to do what I had been trying to teach it: there are better and worse times for certain lines of thought and beach time is not a good time for thesis-thinking. So, don’t even bother!

A month or two after I had accomplished the impossible — submitting my thesis on time (a few days early even) — I was lying on my couch and I discovered — to my surprise and dismay — that I was in a horrible and anxious mood. Realizing this, I thought: “How is this possible? I finished my thesis, I live near a beach, I have plenty of money to meet my basic needs, I have a great tan, by any measure my life is fantastic! There’s no reason to feel miserable. This is crazy.”

So, in effort to figure out why I was feeling so bad at that moment, I retraced my thoughts and, eventually, discovered that the bad mood had originated in my worrying about the only negative feature of my life at that time (a bureaucratic struggle at the university). Having retraced my mental steps, I also saw how that very specific worry had eventually transformed into a general and unspecified state of anxiety.

So, I reflected. OK, sure, I have good reason to be angry and frustrated about the situation but, at this present moment, I am totally powerless to change the situation. The institutional machinery will run its course and, when it does, I will be in a position to do something then and only then. Worrying about it now is pointless, futile, and counterproductive. Be angry or frustrated — whatever you’re feeling — and move on.

I took a moment to experience my anger and frustration — to really feel it — then, I told myself to stop thinking about it. And because my mind was now trained not to obsesses over certain trains of thought. I stopped thinking about it. The negative mood disappeared very quickly and I felt better.

I was so pleased with the outcome that I decided to keep at it and, eventually, the process became a habit. If I felt bad, I’d stop what I was doing and reflect. I’d trace my thoughts to the source of the negative thinking, identify it, assess whether or not there was anything I could do to improve the situation at that moment, and always be sure to take the time at some point to really feel the negative feelings.

Fortunately for me, I had already incorporated one important part of the the process into my life: the really feeling it bit.

A few years previously, by writing one ridiculously hateful letter that was never mailed, I realized that allowing myself to experience anger in its full fury — however irrational — is really helpful and, in fact, crucial. More importantly, the person, place, or thing, that caused the anger didn’t even need to experience my anger when I expressed it honestly to myself. Not too long after, I realized that this discovery also applied to other emotions like sadness or hurt. And from that point forward, I started letting myself experience negative emotions — especially those spurred by any memory however distant.

To summarize, this is how I think I came up with my process for dealing with my shitty moods:

First, almost by accident, I taught myself how to control my inner monologue out there on Little Palm Beach. Second, because I was living in paradise, I had no choice but to accept the fact that happiness should be my everyday state of being. Because of this, I was forced to look for the source of my seemingly irrational anxiety and sadness. Third, because I already knew I would eventually feel better if I allowed myself to experience a negative-but-natural-and-rational feeling like anger, hurt, or sadness, when I discovered the source of my bad mood, I was ready to feel it and, by feeling it, make myself feel better in the long wrong.

A couple of years after my time on Little Palm Beach, I watched my young nephew and his mother in action. He was happy one moment, went cranky, and then started wailing like it was the end of the world. Other than giving him a comforting place to cry it out, my sister-in-law said and did nothing else. After a few minutes of pathos, he was a perfectly happy kid again. More vibrant than before even! And I thought to myself, “That’s how it’s suppose to work.” Sometimes in life, we feel bad, we need to experience those emotions, then we feel better again.

Of course, as we grew older, we eventually learn — and I think rightly so — we can’t always cry it out whenever our feelings are hurt or our hormones are out of whack. The mistake many of us seem to make is to think that experiencing these feelings is itself a bad thing and we work very hard not to do it ever. I’m prepared to speculate that everyone needs to experience these kinds of feelings in the short term to be truly happy in the long term.

My suggestion for one and all is this: the next time you feel shitty, identify the source of the feelings, feel as much as you are ready to feel at that moment, and move on until the next time you need to feel it. Some extroverted folks may want a person to witness the feelings but I doubt it has to be the person, place, or thing that was the cause of the negative feelings.

In the early going, for some of you, it might seem like experiencing negative feelings only unearths more negative feelings to experience but, based on my own efforts, I can say you will feel better — even if only less worse — and eventually the hurt and sadness will fade and only happiness will remain — whether or not you are lucky enough to be living in paradise.

A Slow Bloom Rising: Towards The Possible.

In December 2009, thanks to the GCTC, I participated in an incredibly valuable Viewpoints masterclass given by Michael Greyeyes. Michael is an excellent teacher, everyone who attended the workshop was fully engaged with the process, and the Viewpoints technique is a powerful framework with which to make sense of the creative process.

For me, the masterclass was a success because it introduced a coherent and satisfying approach to creativity that encouraged me to look outside of myself — to others, to the physical space around me — for creative inspiration. For someone as internally focused as I am, it was a curiously liberating and satisfying approach to creation.

In 2000, a friend convinced me to attend a DJ set by Richie Hawtin, one of the most creative DJs out there. I had only one beer on the evening but the arrangement of music he created with three turntables and an effects pedal got me high.

Hawtin’s set, and my subsequent investigation of the dance music scene, helped me realize that the aesthetic impulse can be expressed successfully at different levels. Some musicians affect us by arranging notes, some musicians arrange other musicians, and some others arrange records. For someone who was obsessively focused on the micro dimensions of creativity, it expanded my sense of the possible and was the beginning of the end of my aesthetic snobbery.

What do these two idea-experiences have to do with each other?

They intersect at this question: if I look outside myself for inspiration and if I express my aesthetic impulse at a macro rather than a micro level, what might be possible?

A Look Again for the Play In It.

True story: when I was in my teens, I thought I’d pretty quickly end up married with children and living a more or less conventional 9 – 5 lifestyle.

My older brother, you see, was the artist. He painted alone in his room, slept in, and wore paint splattered jeans.

He’s now married with children and has long had a steady and highly respectable job. He also long ago gave up his art.

I asked him about it, a couple of years ago. He said something like this:

“It helped to define who I was. It was also a coping mechanism. I used art to figure things out. Eventually, I didn’t need it any more. I stopped.”

No matter what happens now — even if I buy a condo, settle down, buy a wiener dog — I won’t ever really be able to say I’ve had a conventional life. That much is settled.

I wonder, nevertheless, if I will, at some point, give up the art.

The very best teachers plan for obsolesce, some ladders take us to heights where they are no longer needed, and I’m  deeply influenced by intellectual traditions that end in contented silence.

I’m also most at peace, with the sun and the sky and the sky and the sky.

Then, after a period of restless uncertainty, I skulk in a coffee shop and look again for the play in it.