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This is a guest post from Michael Laurence. Previously at Get Rich Slowly, Michael has shared his thoughts on investment risk and what happens when more money makes you miserable.
You hear the phrase “the game of life” all the time.
There are books on Amazon instructing us on how to win at the “game of life”. Hell, Milton Bradley’s “The Game of Life” from 1860 — still sold today — was the first popular board game in the United States.
In the Real World, the game of life’s rules and criteria for success are vague and never explicitly stated. But we all know what they are. To win, you need:
- money (or, more accurately, conspicuous consumption)
- physical attractiveness
- kids who go to great schools and are athletically successful
- and so on
“The game of life” has become more than a metaphor. Many people — obsessed with their status, career, or where their kids go to school — have internalized this idea and literally view their life not as something to enjoy, but as a competition to be won.
This is a tragedy. Life is not a game.
A game is an activity where you compete against others. In games, players pursue goals with no intrinsic value. It doesn’t really matter who puts a ball through a hoop (or over an arbitrary line) more frequently, right? Games are governed by external rules that the players have no role in creating but which they nevertheless must follow. In most games, there’s only one winning player or team. Most participants are “losers”.
Before I go on, let me say I love sports — both playing and watching. Games are a lot of fun. They’re great hobbies.
Games are, however, a terrible template for life.
The Good Life
For one, that which is important in life can’t be competed over. While each of us has our own specific vision of the good life, we can all agree a good life tends to have certain characteristics: living by a set of ethics, maintaining meaningful…
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