Feb 15 Inspired by war, here is a fun little game that was concocted by yours truly. In keeping with finding out the origin of things, this took place at the winter retreat of the Hi Koi fellowship in December 2007. Anyways, the game adds the mindlessness of war with punishments and randomness that will amuse you to no end. It is good clean fun! And it happens to be good for you!
Equipment
- At least 1 deck of cards
- 2+ players
- 1 cup for each player
Gameplay Deal all of the cards to each player (as in war). Players are not to look at their cards. Play occurs in rounds (“battles”) with each player revealing the top card in their pile. The highest card (ace is high) is the winner. All players with cards lower than the highest relinquish their card to the player with the highest card as well as drink an arbitrarily small amount of water (i.e., a sip). If the 2 players have equally high cards, they are now to engage in a “war” with each player placing their top 3 cards facedown and revealing the 4th card. This continues until one of the players engaged in the “war” has a higher card. The loser of the war must relinquish all cards as well as drink the rest of the water in their cup. Once a player has lost all of their cards, they are eliminated. Each loser must drink the number of cups of water relative to their standing (i.e., the first person eliminated with 6 players has a standing of 6th and will then drink 6 cups of water).
Alternate Versions:
- Winner must drink the water
- Use food instead of water
Jan 27 Search for anything of substance, and you will find that it is quite easy to start believing that there is only one option that will satisfy. And even though it is near impossible to tell whether you have exhausted all possibilities in the world, you know that you will immediately recognize that Perfect One.
The Perfect One is the ideal that you have in your mind of whatever it is that you are looking for. It is going to be recognized and apparent. You are sure of this. Far be it from me to doubt that you could possibly know this for sure.
For example when you are dating, you are looking for the Perfect Boyfriend/Girlfriend. If you are a little better at seeing the bigger picture, you are looking for the Perfect Husband/Wife. But through the good and bad dates, you are evaluating the other person by holding them up against your ideal. Once the other person does not match, you are going to move on. Don’t pay attention to the fact that the person would make a very good match for you despite being slightly too short. Much more tragically than missing a good match in search of a perfect match, though, is being married to someone who you eventually believe to not be the perfect match. When that happens, you might find that you have found the Perfect One in another person. At the very least in this situation you are going to imagine the possibilities of a different life, and at the worst it can lead you to pursue your fantasies. This will obviously hurt many people around in addition to making you a liar (since you could not keep your vows).
Another instance when people look for the Perfect One is when they are house hunting. When you are searching for a house, people often advise you that you will “just know” once you walk into a house. That is rubbish. It is just another way of saying that you should be looking for the Perfect House. Forget the fact that you are looking at houses that would work out just fine. And forget the fact that any house will have its problems. Forget the fact that it’s just a building that will not last!
The horrible thing about this mindset is not that you should have standards. When someone fails to meet your standards for a mate or if a house is completely broken, you should move on. That just makes sense. However, the horrible thing about this mindset is that it will fool you into doing things that do not make any sense at all. You will fall in love with the Perfect One with your heart but not with your head. And then when (not if) reality comes in the form of imperfections, you will be horribly disappointed. And it will hurt.
Can this be fixed? Yes it can! Today you can realize that there is no perfect one, whatever it is that you are looking for. Realize that settling can be just a negative take on this and realize that settling is not always so bad. Settle on something that is acceptable (this seems obvious but don’t settle on something that is unacceptable). If you do not settle, then at least start to believe that the Perfect One will never be found. Move forward with the knowledge that you will NOT find the Perfect One. And if the results match up to your expectations, you are much less likely to get into trouble.
Jan 14 Given enough time, we rather forget about the origin of things. That reminds me of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy where the novels are set thousands of years in the future, and the things that we know about now have by then become so far removed so as to be thought myth. They could not fathom the planet that we live on, and they could barely remember that they had originated from Earth.
Even when we are not so far removed from the origin of things we begin to see disagreements about the facts. As time moves on, opinions diverge. Sometimes no opinion even leads to the truth. Sometimes people become fanatical about their opinions. In any case, we can see this phenomenon here and now.
Give a new idea a couple of years, and it will be as if they had always existed. Nicknames just need time before they become the preferred way of referencing things (case in point: not too many people could tell you that “blog” is actually just a chopped up version of “web log”). Games are invented and taught to others with no regards as to why certain things are the way that they are. It is amazing, really, to think of how much information we pass on without even stopping to think about where that information comes from.
It seems to me that the most important aspect would be the origin of information. I know that I want to know if I can trust the source of information before I willingly pass it on.
Oh by the way, Lean On Me is a song by Bill Withers. You cannot use it for worship.
Dec 30 Amelia Earhart’s parents must not have been at all surprised by the career that she chose. Hopefully the outcome is more positive than her namesake’s, though. Oh well, I guess that everyone needs to have a “thing” huh?
Late breaking news! There is a huge surge in babies named Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffet.
Later breaking news! All of that wealth still makes it quite hard to get through the eye of that needle.
Dec 22 Growing up, I heard the children’s rhyme:
Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me
It was assumed that this saying would protect us from other people’s mean words. And when you’re a young child, it is easy to trick yourself into believing it.
But then you get older and you realize the truth. Words are, in fact, more powerful than physical pain. Physical pain definitely has its place. Broken bones, strained joints, diseases, and so on are all painful and uncomfortable (to say the least) to go through. But all of that pales in comparison to the effect that words and emotional trauma can have.
While it’s rather debatable what can hurt a person more, it is pretty easy to see how emotional trauma can scar people for life. The life of a child who has verbally abusive parents can be negatively impacted for good even with counseling. While I do not want to undermine the damage that physical pain can have, the emotional pain is the one that I have seen with my own eyes because it happens all of the time. One can toil for great lengths of time over something, and sometimes it seems like it takes only a single word to make all of that labor futile. Words get at us even through our armor and shields. They needle their way through kinks and prick us to death. And the worst part of all is that it is the words of those closest to us that hurt the most. Well maybe even worse than that is the fact that we are all so horrible in regards to how we use our words.
The tongue: so mighty and so horrible. No one can tame it, but we must try, eh?