Day: October 9, 2016

Yesterday my eldest and I had a conversation over Minecraft. To those who don’t know me, Minecraft has become strangely connected to peace and meditation for me. I listen to Buddhist lectures when I play alone and when I play with the kids it always ends up in some manner of philosophical conversation. Yesterday we fell upon the subject of finished projects. The boys are suddenly into pixel art and spent their available free time this weekend scouring the web for video instructions on how to make images of their favorite characters using Minecraft blocks. The eldest found a set of videos of people who made elaborate 28 hr projects. At the end of one such project the creators blew up the entire thing. He lost his mind. When he asked me about it I explained that it didn’t matter what they did after they saw the finished work, because they were already finished. This took additional time to explain.

The boy is working through his own 20+ hour project and could not grasp how, after all that work, they could just blow it to bits–having no lasting piece of it to peruse at their leisure. On the surface I understand his confusion. However, that confusion is only surface. I first related the situation to gaming. I asked him about the games he plays and how he gets his character better and better in pursuit of beating the end boss. Then I asked him what he does with the game after he beats it. He leaves it alone, of course. So then what is the best part of the game? Is it the battle at the end? After a while he admitted that he enjoys playing the game and experiencing the quest and the build up to the boss battle. In other words, he appreciates the journey.

In games, in writing, and in general life itself it is moreso about the journey than it is about the destination. Too often we are concerned with the achievement of completing something and marking that notch on our belt or affixing that badge to our legend. Still what is a notch or a badge but a signifier to tell someone else that we did something. What we keep is the experience of doing what we love. The greatest stories are not of the end boss battle but of the journey to get there.

 

 

Trump’s October surprise is not actually a surprise. We know the dude has been in multiple playboy videos, is on his third trophy wife, and routinely acts as if he might be sexually attracted to his daughter because she epitomizes female sexuality as he sees it. There’s more of course, but wasn’t that enough warning that he might not feel like women are all that equal? Putting him up against the first female candidate and having a significant portion of America still be all in on voting for him only serves to highlight the terrible distance we still must achieve in turning America into a legitimately equal and inclusive society and not just one that acts like it is when it is not.

I feel like this is the real Black lives Matter conversation. Not that we have a problem with how our society criminalizes black people, not that there may or may not be justifications for such action, but we chose to focus on justifying the statements and protecting the idea of the law enforcement vs. considering looking at the prevailing conditions that cause so many people to feel like this is a problem.

In other words, we treat discrimination the same way we treat global warming. I can promise that without a sea change (pun intended) on each of them we will lead our nation and our world into ruin.

Some Thoughts:

1. Got to get back to being disciplined and really being a scion for my family.
2. People are delicate and you can only make so many mistakes and wrong choices before they stop letting you in.
3. At some point it is easier to recognize the fault in yourself and take control of that.