Humainologie creative dialogue on A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility Wednesday January 5
- Arthur Clark
- Jan 2, 2022
- 3 min read
“Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” – Jawaharlal Nehru
“If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.” – Thomas A. Edison
“Turn your obstacles into opportunities and your problems into possibilities.” – Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Live to stretch. Live to expand the horizons of what you had thought were the limits of what you can become.
Well of course there is all the stuff we just have to do every day, day in, day out. Ah, and that’s where play comes in! My mother taught me long ago to make a game of things you have to do in life. If there’s a difficult or boring task you must do, structure your approach as a game. Depending on how you design the game, that difficult or boring task might become easy or fascinating. You can become addicted to playing those games that involve doing things you had thought were difficult or boring. And thus do you expand the horizons of your possibilities.
James Carse taught me the difference between finite and infinite games. I will send you my synopsis of his book Finite and Infinite Games: a Vision of Life as Play and Possibility before Wednesday.
I have included herewith a few questions to get the game started, and Shinobu has provided the Zoom link for our game this coming Wednesday, January 5. Here it is, and here they are:
Topic: Humainologie Dialogue Session Time: Jan 5, 2022 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Feb 23, 2022, 8 occurrence(s) Jan 5, 2022 06:30 PM Jan 12, 2022 06:30 PM Jan 19, 2022 06:30 PM Jan 26, 2022 06:30 PM Feb 2, 2022 06:30 PM Feb 9, 2022 06:30 PM Feb 16, 2022 06:30 PM Feb 23, 2022 06:30 PM Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86365003921?pwd=RkRVQVkvaHhML3FoYkRybHpOak1UUT09 Meeting ID: 863 6500 3921 Passcode: 12345
See if you can come up with playful answers to some of these questions and share them with us on January 5:
· What games have you enjoyed playing in the past?
· Have you ever made a game out of something to make it more interesting? Please tell us about your own experience with this strategy.
· Can you take a familiar difficulty in life and create a game structure to make it easier? For example, any of the following might be made into a game:
o Difficulty getting up the enthusiasm to start the day.
o Difficulty getting started with a task (such as income tax reporting) that must be done by a certain deadline each year.
o Difficulty interacting with someone who annoys you.
o Difficulty coping with setbacks or failure or disappointment.
· Write down at least three things you would love to be able to do but which seem beyond your limits. Pick one and design a game structure that might – if you started playing the game – bring that thing within reach.
· If there were just one thing you would like to explore in 2022 – something you could always look back upon with the delight of having done it – what would that one thing be? How would you structure a playful approach to it for the year ahead?
Life is like a game of cards. Don’t complain about it. Shut up and deal.
Wishing you a New Year full of play and possibility,
Arthur
P.S. and BTW, Grace and I have recently been playing with Ikebana, and here is the Ikebana arrangement I did yesterday, New Year’s Day.
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