We human beings have a strange relationship with the idea of "life." Our capability for language and thinking makes us the only species that can sit back and ponder it... and interestingly, for many people, what results from that pondering is a distaste for "life." Just taking a look at some common sayings about life can give us a feel for this. We've all heard variations of sayings like: "Life sucks," "life is hard," "life sucks and then you die," "life is a bitch," "not fair? Well life isn't fair!" There's also broader statements like "I don't know what's become of this world," or "the world is just going to s***." (Incidentally, I always want to ask such people how that makes them feel about themselves, being that by simply existing, you are the world that you're talking about). Even those who don't feel quite that resentful towards life might agree with the general feeling of life being tough, hard, or a difficult assignment that must be carried out. It's not often that you hear someone shout "Damn, life is easy!" When it comes down to it, regardless of your level of distaste towards life, I think there is a particular way of relating to life that we've all bought into, which is that life... is serious.
But is life really serious? Who says it has to be?
Let's look a little deeper into what we mean, or at least feel, when we think of life as being serious, and see how well it really holds up. Generally, when we relate to something as being serious, there is a sense of it having some deeper meaning, and maybe some sense of danger or risk involved if we were to not take it seriously.
So let's start with the meaning part... When it comes to meaning, we tend to think of meaning as being something that exists outside of us, that is built into the world and is waiting for us to discover it. The language that we use around meaning treats it as a "thing," or a noun, and makes it sound as though it's something we can find and be able to stick in our pocket and walk away with. But another way of looking at meaning is as a verb, as something that human beings do... it is an interaction between us and the world. Human beings create meaning, we put meaning onto the world. Using language, we label the world around us, use those labels to talk about it, draw lines and divide it up, quantify it, compare and evaluate the different parts, and we do this in increasingly complex and refined ways (this is what science is all about). But the words and ideas that we use to describe the world are not the same thing as the world. The symbol is not the same as the thing it represents. You can't eat the word "a-p-p-l-e" or climb up the word "t-r-e-e." You can't tie up a pile of firewood with a line of longitude. And ask yourself: If no humans remained on the planet, would there still be meaning? What would the meaning of a sunset or constellations be if there weren't any human beings around? What would written words on paper "mean" if there were no human beings to read them and make meaning of them?
Onto the danger part.... Even if you can agree that meaning is not already prepackaged and built into life, life must surely still be serious, because it's dangerous... after all, you could die from it! If you're going to argue with someone about whether or not life is really serious, the conversation will eventually boil down to the risk of dying: "If you don't take life seriously, fly straight, get a good job, be successful, pay your bills, you'll be poor... you'll starve to death!" But is death serious? We could question the seriousness of death just as easily as we question the seriousness of life. Death is not some evil consequence. It is simply the necessary flip-side of life. In the same way that we can not know light without knowing darkness, black without white, back without front, we wouldn't know what life was without death to help us distinguish it. Imagine a world where death did not exist.... we'd have no such word or concept as "life." Things would be stagnant, overcrowded, overgrown, and even worse, it would be mind-numbingly boring. Is that really the type of world you'd want? If your answer is no, then death is no longer an enemy.
So when we really get down into it, life doesn't come prepackaged with meaning already tied to it, and death is not the enemy of life any more than up is the enemy of down. And so if life is not serious, than what is it? Well what do human beings tend to do when we're not doing "serious" stuff? We play. So what if life were play? What if life was really just one big, elaborate game?
Human beings come into this world knowing that life is play. As a young child, everything is play. Beginning with the game of "peek-a-boo" as an infant, and later on exploring, discovering, drawing, hide and seek, and the games become more elaborate, with rules and stories behind them. Even learning, which we later come to think of as being very serious business, is play at first. If you are able, try to remember how excited you were to learn words and numbers as a small child. And when you were successful in learning how to read or say a particular word... victory! However, as we grow older we're taught in a number of different ways that life is actually serious business, and that play is unimportant and should be limited. Play must be confined to situations where it is appropriate, and as soon as it's over, it's back to real life... the serious stuff.
But who says things have to be serious? Do we really need to draw a line between play and "real life?" What if all of the "serious" things that we do in life are just increasingly complex games.... games that we got so lost in that we forgot they were games. Are grocery shopping, and bills, and work really serious? Do they really "mean" anything? And do you really have to do those things, or do them in the particular way that you do them? Says who? You could just as easily choose not to, if that was the type of game you wanted to play. And if you think "That's ridiculous, I wouldn't want to live that type of life..." then fine! But don't then say that the way you're living is the way life has to be. That's the just the particular game you're choosing to play. Own it.
Just like life, games do not have any real meaning to them other than the meaning that we lend them. As human beings, when we play, we get together and make up rules and suddenly we have a game, and the game becomes meaningful. The longer we play it, and the more rules we add, and the more complex it gets, the more meaning it takes on. But deep down, it's not really serious. It doesn't really mean anything. What is the meaning of baseball, or football, or music, or painting?
Just like life, games have to have some risk involved in order to be worth playing in the first place. What fun would any game or sport be if there was no risk of losing? Even doing a puzzle or making art by yourself carries the risk of it not turning out the way you wanted it to. In the same way, the risk of just being alive is that at some point you might get sick or injured, and at some point you will die. The risk of getting into a relationship is that the person could betray you, or at some point you could lose them. The risk of working is that you could get fired, or fail, or get really stressed out.
When we forget that life is a game, it suddenly becomes something more than a game, it becomes serious. We begin to feel that life really means something, and that meaning isn't something that we had anything to do with. And at that point, it becomes an obligation, something that we were thrown into and have to suffer through or try to overcome. We become fearful of failure, fearful that we're going to do life incorrectly. We become inflexible and fall into boring, old patterns. We approach life with caution, or just play the part of the spectator and don't engage in life at all. Have you ever met someone who took a game way too seriously? They're no fun to play with. They are overly cautious, they're boastful when they win, they're furious when they lose, they feel that things are unfair, and most importantly, they will never, EVER allow the rules to be broken. In many cases they become unwilling to play the game at all, because it's not worth the stress. You might chuckle thinking about this person in your life, but consider the things in life that you struggle with the most, that cause you the most suffering. Are you not doing the same thing, but with a different game? You might respond "No but my thing is really serious..." but then we might just say that you've taken your game so seriously that you won't even dare to think of it as a game! Now that is an exciting game!
A strange thing happens when we choose to take the stance that all of life is a game. Life suddenly becomes something playful and intentional. You recognize that all of the things that we consider to be serious, are serious for no other reason than because we say that they are serious. You become more flexible, more creative, more willing to break some of the "rules." You recognize that you don't really have to do any of the things that you do, but you choose to do them for no other reason than because you choose to play that particular game. The work game, the marriage game, the parenting game, the exercise game, the cooking dinner game, the politics game, the driving your car game, on and on. You become more willing to jump into games that have high stakes, even games that you've lost in the past, that were painful or frightening, because games need to have risks in order to be worth playing! What would be the point of playing a game that involves zero risk? That would be like walking onto a playing field and saying "Listen everyone! I'm willing to come play with you... but NO ONE is allowed to score on me... is that understood?!" And if you can welcome the losses and disappointments, as crucial parts of playing an exciting game, then you will have the opportunity to experience victory as well.
When you play life as a game, you are free to really play the game for all it's worth. You are free to take it as seriously as you want, and really lose yourself in it. It makes no sense to approach it cautiously, or sit the game out, because you chose to play this game, knowing full well that there were risks involved... that was the whole point! So jump in there, make it interesting, play some games with really high stakes, trust people, love people deeply, go to work and play your job for all it's worth, do the dishes like you're competing in the dish olympics.... not for any good reason, just for play. And maybe even break some rules once in a while... it's your game after all.
*In addition to the modern behavioral science that I typically draw from in these blogs, this particular blog was heavily influenced by a philosopher named Alan Watts, whom I would highly recommend reading and listening to. Interestingly, Watts' philosophy, which was influenced by far eastern religious traditions as well as his study as an Episcopal priest, has many parallels with the philosophy underlying modern behavioral science. There are a number of his audio lectures available on Youtube.com and he published many books, my favorite thus far being "The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are."
