Is life more like a game than a work in progress? According to some, there are set rules for this giant pathway of multicolored squares that we’re supposed to follow through the gumdrop forest. 10 or more, at least, including but not limited to ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Honor thy father and thy mother’ although they could probably just shorten it to ‘Thou just shalt not be a total asshole, ok?’ There are clear cut guidelines and things you must do in order to emerge victorious from your quest, whether that be to clear all the red chips off the board or find out who killed someone in the library with a lead pipe. And, there is always a clear cut winner. You can play in the way of making everyone feel good about themselves and proclaim 2nds and 3rds but to get technical about it, there is only one 1st, and that’s the person who reaches Candyland before anyone else does.
Then again, for a giant game, the rules of life seem to be far less intelligible than those of their Milton Bradley counterparts. Is it ok to steal? If you’re starving to death and as long as you don’t steal from someone with less than yourself. Is it ok to hate your parents? Of course it is because sometimes parents abuse their children and who could love someone like that. And if someone reaches the destination before I do, does that make me a loser? Should I just give up?
Everyone likes to know that their suffering in life will not eventually come to naught. We like to have a purpose to everything that we do. Sometimes we inflict pain upon ourselves but only because we know (or, we think we know) what end we are achieving with it and it’s that end that matters, not the journey we took to get there. Of course there are times where we appreciate the journey as well, knowing what the end is. And knowing that if the end turns out to be worse than what we thought it would be, that we will not appreciate that journey half as much.
We respond to rewards. That is a basic psychological principle. In all things, reward is more effective than punishment as a system of reinforcement. So if life seems so terrible, why do we keep going? Because every now and again, you roll the dice and you get another turn, or you get to skip ahead a few steps. To further upon the reinforcement principle, what’s even stronger than reward is not knowing when we’re going to get it. Variable ratio, the administering of reward after no set number of times performing a certain task, is the strongest reinforcement schedule to apply if you’re looking to foster behavior that will not be easily eliminated. Not knowing whether or not our next step will lead to heartache or to elation is what keeps us coming back for more.
In the end, you just keep looking for that great revelation. The one that will allow you to skip directly to go and collect your $200 or sense of great enlightenment, whatever it was you were playing the game to win. You thought you were close the last time the dice fell in your favor, but you only got ahead two steps. And those two steps were just enough to keep you in the game, to make you stick around until the dice come your way again. Because you know that this time, since you’ve waited so patiently, will be the roll you’ve been dying to make. It seems as if everyone else in your group has already made it to the lost king at the end, and you’re barely out of the candy cane forest.
And even more important than all of that is this: win or lose, what the hell do you do when you get to the end? Gloat in your victory and settle in for a long sit on your throne? Start looking toward the next round?
Or, learn your lesson from the one you just lost, and give up all together?
[AN: This was posted in my personal LiveJournal on November 13th, 2007. I did a little editing here and there for capitalization and such but otherwise it's word for word. I'm particularly proud of this little piece of contemplation for some odd reason, and I find myself revisiting it from time to time to do sort of a "status check" with myself. Am I still in this state of mind? How have I grown since I wrote this, and do I feel like that's adequate? Or do I feel like I still have some work to do? Most importantly.. Am I still in the game?]
