Radically good things are happening around us every day. They just are. But you can’t read all about it as easily as you can the radically bad. And while there’s no way to know the current tally, there is enough history and beloved poetry to remind us that small and simple things do and can save this world.
Consider how the “life as a game” analogy usually tells one narrow version of life reduced to a blend of strategy, skill, and endurance, linking up with good or bad luck. This recipe has one boring possibility: winners and losers. NYU professor James Carse up-leveled this analogy when he flipped the game on its head, focusing on the two possible kinds of players.
Finite players master the rules and roles and play to win. Since they focus on completion and success, they are bound by past accomplishments and failures. Infinite players play for the love of the game. They focus on possibility, renewal, and daily enrichment.
Finite players avoid uncertainty because they can’t be prepared for all the variables, which puts their victory under threat. Infinite players expect uncertainty, treating it more like a surprise, that it could introduce something new and potentially better to the game, or that they could learn valuable lessons through the challenge of adapting. Since they play for love of the game, they focus more on playing well—learning, being challenged, and enjoying it—than on winning. They want to keep the game in play.
A family friend of ours was leading a London theatre tour recently, and we were lucky enough to go along. He skilfully set the scene for us before each performance, sharing handouts with details about the context, playwright, and themes to maximize our enjoyment, without giving away any spoilers. A professor and playwright himself, it feels like he clearly plays this theatre game for the love of it.
In quick order, Punch, Dear England, My Neighbor Totoro, and The Seagull are each a tale of games gone wrong and humans floundering in the wake of past or impending loss. And while some are more grave in their portrayal of enormous human failure and/or tremendous bad luck, the sense of humanity under pressure is huge. Evolved for survival, each character struggles to find meaning in the face of loss. Not surprisingly, it is the players who find an infinite approach that win our hearts, who tell the redemptive story about lives that can continue with meaning and possibility.
Each performance received a standing ovation, and I like to think it’s because, in addition to brilliant portrayals of grief and despair, we were awed by the human ability to transform sorrow, regret, and real loss into hope, collaboration, and newfound meaning before our eyes. The most shocking story of this sort of transformation from a sense of finite doom to an almost infinite hope happens in Punch, a gripping drama based on the true story of two young men’s lives irrevocably altered by a single impulsive act of violence. Award-winning playwright James Graham skillfully reworks Jacob Dunne’s memoir, retelling the incident of a drunken celebratory night out with his friends that ended the life of the son of Joan and David Hodgkinson.
When their very understandable finite-game lens craving revenge and as long a sentence as possible falls flat (Dunne’s jail time is cut in half from the already abysmally low three years, which was less than others serving time for stolen shoes during riots), they are left with a sense of despair and no options to feel better. When a restorative justice therapist gets in touch with them about a program to bring victims and perpetrators together, the parents decide to meet with Jacob as a sort of last hope effort, and what ensues is nothing short of miraculous. Through a process of vulnerability, compassion, and a profound acceptance of what is, they co-create a sort of radical healing beyond imagination.
Grief and loss often throw us humans into a finite game if we weren’t already there: in an attempt to gain more control, we buckle down on rules, roles, and forcing outcomes. Interestingly, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s pivotal research on the stages of grief revealed how those most excruciating experiences can actually help us transform to a more infinite way of being, if we let them. The losses we experience are real and need to be felt, but can always serve as compost for our future strength if we take the infinite game approach. Kübler-Ross explains:
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Learning most from struggle and failure is old news. So why do we always want everything to be easy and in our favor? It might stem from the social conditioning that has us desperate to win, or at least impress and fit in. But there is a different option if we can unlock the infinite game approach in how we show up and do things in relationships, at work, or just in response to circumstances that we wouldn’t choose.
Carse makes it clear that the infinite game is more fulfilling, collaborative, and even fun. He also reminds us that the choice of game we play—finite or infinite—is ours alone and that everyone around us is also playing their own game. As Carse says, “No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself.”
Remember, what we crave most from the characters we read about or watch is that they find their way to their infinite game! Not defined by their loss or overly performative or competitive in relation to socially defined outcomes, they remind us of the joy in their own self-discovery and still allow for the self-discovery of other players. Ready, set, go!