The Game of Life
Did you ever play games as a kid? I come from a family that loves to play games. Now that we’re all grown up (sort of) we tend to play card games - this Christmas my parents, Glenn, and I played TOCK for hours (see image below for TOCK). However, as a kids, my brother and I played lots of board and video games.
In teaching, I think a lot about the Game of Life – yes, the one by Hasbro Gaming. You get your car (in-car-nate) and you go around the board making decisions (college or career), collecting the things (partners, houses, kids, pets, money), and having adventures. Then you get to the end and the player with the most stuff wins. TA-DAH!!!
The Hasbro Game of Life creates the idea that our own lives, for lack of a better description “real life”, is a lot like the game, which is described as a ‘finite game’. Finite games, per my paraphrasing of Simon Sinek’s work, have set rules, a fixed number of players, a defined start, a set goal, winners and losers, and when they goals are reached (someone wins) or time runs out (losers) the game ends.
Examples of finite games include football, baseball, soccer (most sports), car racing, and board games.
Living life, however, is more aligned with the idea of an ‘infinite game’. Infinite Games are different from finite ones: they have changing numbers of players, you might or might not know how many players there are, the game is ongoing (no set start point), the goals and rules can change over time, the goal is to stay in the game, and therefore there is no fixed timeline or end for this type of game – you play until you can no longer play. There aren’t winners or losers, just players or folks not playing.
Examples of infinite games include running a business, being in a long-term relationship (like a marriage), and one’s health.
I’ve noticed that a lot of suffering happens when we confuse one type of game for the other. In my clinical and teaching practices, I see this regularly.
I meet folks who think that health is one set point on the map, and once they are there, they can stop doing all the practices that got them to their state of health (ex: Eating vegetables or exercising until one loses the extra 10lbs, but once the weight is gone, going back to watching Netflix while eating bonbons as a lifestyle) .
I meet students who think that when they get this degree/certificate/accreditation, then the learning stops and they are done. That’s it – win and done.
And one of my favourite quotes from Sinek’s book is “you can’t win a marriage”. It’s not that people don’t try to win at this, they do. My question is, is it useful to try to win over your life partner?
Setting goals and achieving them is great and works for so many people. It’s when the game continues after they have stopped playing/participating, and things continue to change except them, that the suffering happens.
There is nothing wrong with setting goals and even sprinting towards them – sometimes this is exactly what we need to do. And it can be helpful. That said, life is not a sprint, and achieving one goal does not end the game. There is always more – more to try, more to learn, more to do, more to experience. The Game of Life only ends when it ends (as in we die).
Part of me wonders if the confusion is that life is complex enough that we are playing both games at the same time, meaning that parts of life are a finite game, and so using finite game strategies works great, AND that the bulk of life is an infinite game that requires its own unique strategies. Just because you can sprint, does not mean you can run a marathon. Knowing what type of race you are in, makes a difference in how you approach the race, what you do to prepare, and even how you interpret the outcome.
If we know that life is an infinite game, with no winners or losers – just players, what might we do differently? How might we pace ourselves? Can we get curious and know there will be more time and opportunities than expected? Maybe we navigate with more compassion when we realize that everyone is actually in a marathon, even if they’re treating it like a sprint (oh dear – that might hurt tomorrow!).
As we move into a new calendar year, I wonder what might unfold if we remember that a year, our relationships, and our work are infinite games… Instead of trying to sprint through to a finish line and hoping we win, what happens if we pace ourselves, get curious about opportunities, enter with compassion, and think about how to stay in the game? Isn’t time fascinating? What are you doing with your time? I know I am actively thinking about how I am spending mine!
I would love to hear your thoughts and contemplations on infinite versus finite games. Please do share below.