I thought it was Life that I liked.
I was wrong, though. When I googled it, it turns out it was just Careers.
One of the websites did offer the comment, though,"if only real life was as simple as the game of careers." Maybe I'm not the only one who has ever confused the two.
Careers was a board game we played as kids. Success was measured by achieving levels of fame, money and happiness that each player decided for themselves. Winning was being the first to achieve your own goals. And everyone played on the same board by the same rules.
We played it a lot. And enjoyed it, no matter who won. Kind of like life.
But this past Saturday I played a new game. My sister and brother-in-law and their son Sean -- our nephew, were over for dinner. We were celebrating both Jim's and my 65th birthdays, which seemed far less a milestone than we had thought they would be. Both of us are still working full-time for a few years yet because life and careers haven't turned out quite like we were taught they would -- like they did in the old days.
The game was Fluxx -- a card game Sean gave me a few Christmases ago, that it turns out I had not yet even opened, but that he and his friends enjoy playing.
The game is chaos. I found out the only unchanging rule is you play the cards you hold in your hand. Beyond that? It's anyone's guess.
The cards are of four types -- Actions you can take, Goals you can put on the table for all to have to achieve, Keepers that help you achieve a goal, and Rules you also put on the table that become binding for all players as soon as you put them there. Within the four categories, every card is unique. And sometimes odd and irrational.
The result as people play is unsettling. Both the goal of the game and what you need to achieve it constantly change. The actions you can take at any time are random, limited and sometimes unhelpful. The rules of the game are never set and are constantly being changed, added to, manipulated, and even erased by other players. Which means at almost every stage along the way you have no way of knowing really how close or far you are from achieving anything like success. Kind of like life.
No wonder it's called Fluxx.
I can think of other names for it as well. Including a few I can't mention here. But maybe also including Life. And Careers. At least as we experience these things today.
Sean really liked it, though. He did well. In the end he won with an amazing, complex play of the ten or twelve cards he had amassed in his hand that in a sequence of plays he used to change the goals, rewrite the rules in his favour, make good use of his keepers, and make him the winner.
He not only survived the game's intentional chaos, he revelled and excelled in it. I, on the other hand, had by that time already emotionally checked out. I was exhausted by the chaos.
I used to like Careers. I probably used to like Life as well.
But I also find myself wanting to play Fluxx again.
I wonder if I might get better at it. I wonder if it might be therapeutic. Somehow healing, to learn to play well the cards I have in my hand. As unique, odd and irrational as they may be.
