Lift Up Your Hearts!

A scene from a couple of weeks ago:

My husband, his sister, and our nephew are playing a game.  They have repeatedly assured me that they are having fun, and I must believe them, because as soon as they have completed this game they will move on to another—probably a two-person game so said nephew can return to the Lord of the Rings tome that has absorbed much of his free time this week.  (Despite repeated pleas for game-playing, he has managed to complete two of the six books thus far.  And win most of the games as well, which as you can imagine frustrates the dedicated game-players no end.)

However, an observer of the yells, groans, grimaces, and (mostly) muffled curses might be justified in imagining the participants engaged in arduous forced labor.  If this is fun, count me out.  Which they do;  my sister-in-law and I now have an agreement:  She doesn't ask me to play games with her and I don't ask her to ride roller coasters with me.  (Even though I couldn't resist sharing that Manta is the Best Roller Coaster Ever.)

It got me to thinking.  I was a reasonably normal child, and our family enjoyed playing games together; why, then, do I usually find the idea of scrubbing the kitchen floor more attractive than playing games?

I've come up with a few reasons, none of which is completely convincing in itself.

Time (specifically, the lack thereof) is certainly a big factor.  With a Bucket List^* heavy enough to make Giles Corey plead, I'm not inclined to spend hours on an activity that is neither my duty nor particularly enjoyable.  But that just begs the question:  Why do I no longer find games enjoyable?

My lastest inspiration is that not all game players are alike.  There are those who play to play, and there are those (the majority, apparently) who play to win.  I believe I am in the first category.  It's not that I don't like winning, but it makes me very uncomfortable if any of the other players is made unhappy in the process.  Perhaps it comes from being seven or more years older than my siblings; that kind of age difference precludes developing a cuthroat approach to games.  The day my young brother freaked out over being "attacked" in a game of Flinch was the day I lost interest in playing the game.  I also remember an incident when one of my childhood friends and I were playing Monopoly:  she was losing, and became upset, whereupon I shifted strategies so that she won (without, I hope, noticing that I was throwing the game), and afterwards contrived to avoid playing games with her whenever possible.

Then again, it may be my attention span.  I generally am not fond of watching movies—the thought of committing 2 - 3 hours to a movie makes me feel claustrophobic; I'm trapped.  On the other hand, I do enjoy watching several 40-minute episodes of a good mystery television series one after another.  I may end up spending three hours staring at the screen, but there are several built-in escape hatches should I wish to bail out.  Games are the same way:  The games I enjoy playing are short, and though I may play several in a row, I'm not stuck with a long-term commitment.

Or it may be a dislike of regulations and complex rules, the same attitude that turned me off completely to organized sports.  In elementary school I loved sports.  I loved soccer, and baseball, and volleyball, and every other competitive sport we played, both in gym class and at recess.  On summer nights the kids in our neighborhood almost always convened for kickball or another game until it was too dark to see.  But these were wild-and-wooly, free-for-all games, even in gym class.  We followed the basic rules about scoring, but with none of the strategy.  In soccer there were no rules about who could chase the ball, and most of the game was spent tearing up and down the field as everyone tried to get the ball into the goal.  (Needless to say our passing game was not very intelligent.)  Volleyball was a friendly game, with the main object being to get the ball over the net; there were no nasty spikes, no need to stay in your assigned position.  And the play was generally supportive, with teams encouraging one another.  It wasn't about winning, although winning was fun; it was about the sheer joy of physical activity and growing strength, endurance, agility, and skill. 

Along about middle school, however, everything changed.  Suddenly, winning mattered more than playing; ability and strategy mattered; and rules multiplied.  Sports simply were no fun anymore, and I retreated from being an eager, active player to one who did no more than the minimum required by gym class.  I vividly remember my first and last volleyball game at an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship camp in college:  I'd been told it was important for camp fellowship, and was a friendly game.  My siblings, avid volleyball players themselves, would have found it friendly and relatively non-competitive, I'm sure, but the intensity and the yelling and the insistence on hitting the ball "right" (rather than just getting it over the net) completely spoiled the game for me.  Fellowship or no fellowhip, I wasn't at that conference to be screamed at and then made to feel guilty for not enjoying the misery.  As C. S. Lewis said, "Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure."

Those are the ideas I've come up with so far.  I don't think they completely explain my attitude, but it was an interesting meditiation and I've probably unearthed some significant factors.

Do you have any other suggestions?  What kind of game-player are you? 

^*I'm told I use the term Bucket List incorrectly, that it's supposed to be for things like riding in a hot air balloon, travelling to New Zealand, or climbing Mt. Everest.  But can I help it if the things I want to accomplish before I die are more mundane?  Not that "get all our photos scanned, organized, and put into albums" doesn't seem an awful lot like climbing Mt. Everest.