The games we play
(Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Children’s Games, 1560.)
Children's games have simple rules that are easy to grasp and easy to follow. Boundaries are clear, and within the game there's often absolutely nothing else to worry about. Players can run and climb and compete to their heart's content, remaining fully absorbed in the moment.
Schools often provide a similarly regimented and seemingly self-contained domain. Students are expected to learn and follow not only school rules, but also the traditional knowledge accumulated in their field of study. Grades reflect adherence to and compliance with the approved curriculum; there are no expectations of innovation or originality.
A job, a workplace, can provide further rules to live by, a career ladder to climb, goalposts to aim for, criteria to judge and be judged by.
It's tempting to yield responsibility for making sense of our own lives to such external authorities and rule-bound games, especially when we don't know any better, or can't even imagine the possibility of knowing better. After all, institutions and so-called experts can't be wrong, right?
Growing up, I realize, is becoming aware of the rules we are actually living by, and reclaiming responsibility for what we do in our own lives by consciously choosing and making our own games and rules, based on our own values and understanding.
This is difficult because it turns out there's nobody to tell us what to do except ourselves. There's a huge mass of information out there, fragmented and conflicting, of varying and sometimes unclear provenance; shiny trivia and distractions abound, as do competing prophets and gurus and worldviews to subscribe to.
The temptation then becomes to throw up our hands and just say, screw it, I'll just try my best to survive, do no harm, carve out my own bubble and comfort zone to spend the rest of my life in.
But then one realizes — remembers — that merely surviving is not really living. Sparks of child-like wonder and curiosity remain even in the most jaded adult, just waiting for some trigger to begin smoldering.
The trick may then be just to follow the smoke where it leads, to relearn how to feed that fire; maybe even attract others on the same quest for meaning, and attempt to figure something out together.
But we must be able to see as children see, to wonder as they wonder, to ask as they ask. The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth.
Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book
This essay is part of a month-long series of 30 essays.