I love games. In particular, I’m a big fan of epic, sprawling space opera games like Twilight Imperium. When you’re playing Twilight Imperium, you attach a tremendous importance to things like Mecatol Rex. This planetwide city was the administrative center of the old empire, and whoever controls it has an inside track to becoming the ruler of the new empire. So it really matters. You spend hours worrying about who controls Mecatol Rex and when, and how you might become that person at the right time to seize victory.
Then the game ends and Mecatol Rex becomes again just a cardboard hexagon. You toss it in the box and suddenly it doesn’t matter who controls Mecatol Rex. All you have is the memory that it once mattered to you a lot. And now it doesn’t matter at all.
Over the course of our lives, we play so many games. And they’re all like this. Things matter for a while, and then they don’t.
Picking up the Pieces
But Helpless Pieces in the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
This stanza from Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam makes it seem like the process of putting a game away is easy, quick, and neat. But that’s rarely the case with the kinds of games I play.
As you take all these pieces and work to put them back in the box, many come with a sting of memory or emotion. You remember the maneuvers you did to achieve a particular goal, or the times you were thwarted. There can be some real anger and bitterness there at times. Sometimes you put a lot of effort into gaining a particular piece or placement because you hoped it would yield great gains, then you find that it really didn’t matter much at all.
Inevitably with these complicated games, there are some pieces that just don’t make it back in the box. A resource cube knocked on the ground, perhaps. A control marker that was put on a goal card that didn’t get reunited with its faction. An army discarded after its destruction, lost and forgotten.
In my house, we have so many of these that we designated a little tray for them. You look through it and you see the odds and ends of various games, each with their memories of important moments, now long gone.
With the death of several family members recently, my house has become like this tray. There are all these disconnected objects from people who are gone now, and I struggle to remember or even identify why these things might have mattered.
Work Is Play
One of the games we spend so much time playing is work. You have a job and for five or ten or 20 years, there are things that really seem like they matter. There are politics and maneuvers. There are pieces and positions that seem so important at the time.
And then it’s done, and all those things that seemed to matter just don’t anymore. You have a memory that they used to matter, that you used to care. But now they don’t matter, and if you care at all, it’s about the memory. You’re fingering the game pieces, replaying the electric thrill of the moments that are now gone, irrelevant.
I found a part of a letter my grandma wrote me after we visited her in the care home. She talks about finding the notebook of her clippings and sending me copies of them. They are short columns interviewing neighbors in the Finger Lakes area. The only writing, she says, that she ever got paid for. She’s proud of them. But I don’t have those clippings anymore. Just the record that they existed and that they mattered to her.
Just under this letter, I find contributor copies of a magazine I wrote for a decade ago. I had hoped these might be the start of something new, an important position I would grow from. But like so many maneuvers in our games, they didn’t pan out, and now it’s hard to care about these glossy pieces from a shabby, failed publication.
Enjoy the Game While It Lasts
Chances are that whatever game you’re playing now seems really important. There are a few pieces that you think really matter. Maybe you’re working to achieve positions you think will make a difference. These things fill your mind.
While it’s hard to appreciate, none of these things really matter. Eventually this game will end. You or someone else will put most of these pieces in a box. Only the memories of your temporary victories or setbacks will remain.
So make sure you’re crafting the right memories. Memories of optimizing your resources. Memories of spending time with people you love. And, hopefully, memories in their minds of when you contended mightily together. Starships afire off the shoulder of Lodor, the last bastion of defense before the glittering golden goal, Mecatol Rex.
