Games

... No! Not the Olympic ones... well, maybe, even...

This morning I had one of those mind floating moments and wondered how - or if - playing games shapes our characters, lifestyles or relationships. Or changing perspective: If I see you play, do I see how you live?

According to Wikipedia games are 'attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures'.

So, gaming seems to be deeply embedded into our most inner self... why then do I hate it so much? We live in a world of the biggest variety of games and I just cannot be tempted to play any of those. I think I decided at age of 6 to never play again. Oh, I did the mother and child play, mud soup cooking and those sort of things, but board games were off limits.

I am losing my temper all to easily, I get drawn into my darkest of sides, in which I am running out of control of myself. As soon as competitiveness is spurred on by others doing the same as I do, I reach that moment when it's not funny anymore. At age 6 I threw the board including the stones into the room, parts never to be found again, we suspect the dog ate them... I was told off, was horribly embarrassed about the severity of my misbehaviour and decided to just not play again. The trade-off between excitement and fun and the effort to keep myself at bay always stayed on the side of effort.

I hate losing so much, that I don't like the winning either. At age 18 I was group-forced to join a card game. I won a few rounds and felt awful assuming that the others hate losing as much as I do; it was me causing this feeling, so why should I be happy about the win.

I always wondered why games portrait a world of black and white? One is either a winner or a loser! C'mon this Olympic stereotype that it is already an honour to take part is a bit of a farce, isn't it? We want to see gold medals, nobody ever talks about the silver winner again, or only in a very pitiful way when the loss was an unfortunate circumstance.

Only a few times I was happy playing. At age 25 my father-in-law gave me a beautiful wooden box to test. A colleague of his was researching co-operative games and this one was just beautiful. One would play with a partner to finish the board. It was about strategies each player had to pursue individually, but if one would be too greedy the board would not finish and no one would win. This was my heaven. I knew such a game already; it is called 'Patience'. Quite often it is referred to as 'Solitaire' as it can be played by a single player as well. But I prefer the two player version in which co-operation is key to neatly put the cards onto their piles. I used to play this game with my grandma every Tuesday during a school break. I was about 14 and she had to gently nudge me into playing. Now those are my fondest memories with her.

I am wondering if this kind of play always was in my character, or if she played a role in forming me into this person. We all have our individual ways of tackling challenging situations, sometimes boisterously barging through, sometimes running away, and sometimes co-operating to get the best out of it for everybody. Sometimes one has to give up a little to gain a lot. Giving up is ever so often perceived as losing - I don't care! Giving up without knowing if there will be a win is risky, but it is a risk I am willing to take, anytime! The prize to be won is just too valuable!

My Bucket List

I never saw the movie. I didn't know that there was a movie when somebody on Twitter mentioned a bucket list. There must have been something about that one Tweet drifting in the big stream of posts on my screen. Twitter posts live and die with the rules of evolution - the dull birds don't get chosen as mates and hence won't propagate, as won't dull posts. I however still don't understand the appeal of the word bucket list. Since I didn't even know the term I eventually looked it up only to find that it is the title of a film in which a terminally ill patient creates a list of things he is supposed to do before he kicks the bucket.

Now I am wondering why, after quite a number of weeks, I cannot get this idea out of my head. It is an age old concept, so old that nobody even seems to know where it comes from. Ever heard of the saying 'A man should build a house, plant a tree, father a son and write a book before he dies'? Well, that's the oldest bucket list I know of. The English speaking part of the world makes it as old as Plato, who lived around 400 BC, whereas in the German Google world the word is put into the mouth of Martin Luther, a chap who reformed the church in Germany around the 1500s. The lazy buggers left out the book writing, though. I wonder why?

Although this is an imposed list for most of us, and apart from the fact that it is a rather ridiculous one, for the inventor of the list it surely was something very real and to strive for. So why is this idea starting to bug me now, and not 4o years ago during Sunday school when I might have come across this concept for the first time?

Maybe the older one gets, the more confident one gets as well, and actually dares doing stuff, or one knows more about the world and thus is getting more ideas of what the options are. So, without further ado, here is my list:

• I want to give a proper speech to a big audience
• I want to be on a stage
• I would like to be able to dance well
• I would like to be able to sing without being embarrassed
• I want to have my own fashion line
  
• I DO want to publish a book (the writing part is already done)
• I would like to win a prize or an award for something I have worked for
  
• I would like to have an exhibition with my own paintings and sculptures
  
• I want to own my own business and
• I want to be successful with it

Those things one should write down at the beginning of life, when one still has the time to actually make it. These days one already has to rush it a bit and might have to consider the one or the other shortcut.

Like with my last list item: I always wanted to

• walk in the footsteps of the great Jane Goodall and do field studies with primates.

Well, one would want to have considered taking up a somewhat different education, wouldn't one? Computer Science is not exactly the right line of business, just a thought...

As a replacement I have now booked a holiday trip to Sumatra to encounter the jungle on a four day track with elephants, to learn a bit about what rangers do to survey the national parks, and maybe see Orangutans in the wild. Not entirely the same, but hopefully close enough. On one hand I am hoping for the most spectacular experience of my life, on the other I am hoping to find some flaws like insects, climate, food, lifestyle, anything that would help me to excuse my straying from the original list item. If I could truly say 'This was a fantastic experience, but I am glad that I didn't make it my 'life', then I could cross it off my list and be happy. But what if...

Maybe this list is not just about doing all those things before it is too late; maybe it is OK to do the shortcut versions just to find out whether or not I took the right choices in my life, maybe this list doesn't just have a checkbox but two columns for 'good choice', or' bad choice'.

And maybe it doesn't matter what the outcome is: All that matters is to know, and to make peace with it before it is too late!

Not old, yet!

I thought I am getting old, and this morning I figured out that I don’t. I mean: I do, but not to the extent that I thought I did... Do I make any sense at all?

See, recently I thought I couldn’t keep up with life anymore. For so many years I have only been arranging myself around hubby and the occasional night out with IL, or dinner with friends, and things were fine. Now some younger people – and with this I mean a quarter of a century younger people – have entered my life and I feel like falling apart.

Don’t get me wrong: I love being around them. It is inspiring and fresh and they are lovely. We cook together and go to the movies and watch movies at our house – it’s just that I am exhausted, my head is buzzing and I am feeling like having aged a decade within a couple of month. This being a development which I am not appreciative about, I decided to question the 'age' conclusion.

At first I thought I might have been too settled, with spontaneous activity being kept to a minimum. I once wrote that one needs routine for the nitty-gritty bits of life to free up time for spontaneity. Had I introduced too much routine? All too often conversations go like this these days:

Question/suggestion: 'Let's go to the movies!' Me: 'Well, what is on? We could go next Thursday.' Response: 'Oh no, I meant tonight!' Me: 'TONIGHT!?... tonight... - ahemm'... gaining time... 'hmm... What is on?' Response: 'Oh, doesn’t matter! Let's just go!' Me: ...still gaining time with harrumphing, and quickly thinking about when I have to get up next morning, what I wanted to do that night, how much sleep I had last and will have next night, and if I will survive... 'What time, did you say?...'

Those negotiations usually go on for a while, my cool is gone at that stage, and while everybody is getting impatient, I feel the need to explain myself, what makes the whole matter worse.

When my goddaughter came to visit I knew she would stay for a week and I would dedicate this period of time. That seems to be an important thing to me: Being able to dedicate time. There it was again! The planning ahead thing. Why do I have to plan ahead so much?

Feedback was needed and I interviewed hubby. He tried to be kind in reminding me, that movies never really where my thing. He had a point there, and movies quite often were on the agenda, I however realised that I wouldn’t be up for anything else either. This was a dead end: Was it old age after all?

Now the subject started to follow me. Even Nury wrote a column on '22 signs you have grown up' meaning that you 'got old'. Oh my goodness... don’t get me started.

This at least triggered another thought: What if the theory that children are keeping you young, is wrong? What if they only hold a mirror into your face? What if the solution lies in the choice of social environment? During my holidays I felt perfectly young, sipping my cocktails with 60+ year olds. Blissful moments!

The final clue however came during my morning gym session with my dear friend Imola who is 10 years younger than me. I felt like a spring chicken and hence down the drain went the theory above. And then, while concentrating on my exercise ahead, the mind floated for a split second, and I knew! All of a sudden the burden fell off me and I was one with the world again: It was not my age; it was my lifestyle!

It IS the social environment, but it doesn't have anything to do with age. I am a morning person, and I am surrounded by evening people. With Imola, who is an early bird as well, I felt entirely at ease.

In order to fit into the night owl’s lifestyle I am eating my food at the wrong time of the day, and although I love going to the gym in the mornings I go in the evenings. I like to get up early to do the main housework and pet care, because it gives a clean start into the day – it feels accomplished! I like to sit at the computer early because this is the time of the day when my brain is working well. In the meantime the night people are either in bed or nurturing their morning grump.

I like lunches instead of dinners, but by that time owls only have arrived at breakfast. When they are eventually running up to full speed at night, all I am able to do is to hang in my arm chair keeping hubby company at the telly – something which so far was recognised as a valid and appreciated activity, even if I nodded off.

Now that had changed. All of a sudden I am supposed to be really active at night, meaning that now there is a rather big likelihood of not only performing badly in the gym, but at my morning activities as well. And on top of it all nobody seems to understand why I am such a killjoy when all they wanted to do, is to introduce all this fun into my life. Well, I didn’t understand it myself...

This newly introduced spontaneity is throwing my carefully balanced life completely out of whack. Going to the gym at the wrong time of the day for the benefit of doing something together with hubby is a compromise I am happy to handle, but I cannot compromise on my writing. I can handle spontaneous actions once every fortnight or so, but not several times a week. For everything that needs a shower and hair-wash I’d like to have two days notice, please!

See, and because I am actively voicing my constraints and visibly leaving the scene when everybody else is at their prime, I am a killjoy and weirdo. Owls just passively and invisibly don't show up when I am at my best. Everythging that is not there cannot be weird, and hence they are the 'normal' people.

I am herewith proposing a swap-over scheme. One month I will adjust my lifestyle to the night people and going out with them, and the other month they will have adjust to my ways. Getting up at 5:30, helping with the housework and the pets; when having the morning coffee, I could do an hour of writing, while they do their facebook and internet stuff, and then we could be at the gym by 7AM; coming home by 9 AM to have a shower and a quick breakfast, to then set out for work at 10 – their usual time. On non-gym days we would either do the groceries shopping, or would start work at 8. This way enabled to leave by 4PM we could do some outdoor sport, run errands, or meet friends.

Let’s see who’s up for movies at night, then!