Do Not Read This Post Unless You're Willing to Play

If you do not want to be captured for life, do not read this post, because I am going to talk about the Game. 

The Game is something you play forever, whether you want to or not, because once you know, you’re playing.  The Game is a mystery.  The universal rule is this: you are not allowed to think about the Game.  If you do, you’ve lost.  Once you’ve lost, you must announce your failure to everyone surrounding you, whereupon they are then rewarded for their temporary victory with half an hour in which they may think about the Game.  (My roommate just lost, so I have approximately twenty-seven minutes left.)  Sometimes the regulations of announcement and “victory” are different, but the first rule remains the same: if you’re thinking about it, you’ve lost.  Ergo, all of you have lost the Game.  Sorry.

I’ve explained this obscure concept many times, and frequently I’ve gotten very strange looks.  “But what is it?” people ask me.  “What game are you talking about?”  In the past, I’ve never been able to really answer.  I simply fell back on the fun of the mystery, grinning and saying, “That’s the point.”

But today, in trying to explain it yet again, it occurred to me that there is more to the Game than the mystery of it.  The Game, you see, is a struggle against your own thoughts.  We don’t understand how our thoughts work, and we can’t control which direction they take.  Memories will spring up at random, stirred by the most ethereal of connections.  For example, the picture on my calendar makes me think of Ireland, which makes me think of twisting my ankle, which makes me think of the girl at work who sprained hers, which makes me think of glasses, which somehow makes me think of Sherlock Holmes.  I can explain all but that last one--it just jumped into my head.  The Game brings that lack of control to our attention.  It reveals that it’s a losing battle we’re fighting.  It is a perfect example of how little we actually know about consciousness and thought.  No one wins the Game.  No one can even really get out of it.

The fact that it’s called the Game, however, rather than the Fight or something similar, encourages me.  Regardless of the fact that we are stuck inside our heads, and regardless that it sometimes gets really messy in there, it can still be fun.  The things that spring out of our subconscious don't have to be monsters.  We don’t control our thoughts, but we aren’t controlled by them, either.  And who knows?  Maybe as time goes by, we’ll continue to learn our own selves, and we’ll figure out how to direct our thoughts more efficiently.  Then, just maybe, there will be those who can win the Game of consciousness.