Take any game, strip away technology and format and you will be left with the same four elements. These four elements are common to all games: a goal, rules, feedback, and a sense of voluntary participation.

I propose to you that if you take any life activity, tweak the four above elements into place you will have a game.

Sometimes (meaning pretty much all the time) we find ourselves involved in life activities for which (come hell or high water) you gotta do it. That’s not what I call voluntary participation.

The “omg that’s awfully straight-forward” method of transforming a required activity into one with a sense of voluntary participation is to just change your attitude. You want a sense of voluntary participation while involved in a required life activity, well assume an attitude of voluntary participation.

Another method for adding a sense of voluntary participation to an activity is modify the rules,  then voluntarily participate in the modified rules.

Example: You just gotta do the dinner dishes. Whether you like it or not, the dishes in the sink gotta get cleaned. Nothing voluntary about it.

How about adding the rule that all the dishes need to be scrubbed counterclockwise — not clockwise, not up-down, not side to side. They have to be scrubbed in a counterclockwise motion. You may not have a choice about whether or not you do the dishes. But you do have a choice about whether or not you follow the newly contrived rule.

This new sense of voluntary participation transforms the activity into a game. By changing the rules (even making it harder) then voluntarily participating in the new rules drudgery is turned into fun.

[Note: In follow-up blogs we will look at how playing with the goal and/or feedback can make a life activity into a game.]

Le me give you an example:

A dear friend was helping out by picking up a few items from the grocery store while out doing her own shop. The willingness to help and the actual helping was much appreciated.

One of the items on the short list was 12 oz hot cups. Well, the store was out of 12 oz hot cups. They had 8 oz and 16 oz hot cups — but not 12 oz. Making a decision on which to substitute, she purchased the 8 oz cups.

To me the obvious solution would have been the 16 oz cups.  One could fill the 16 oz cup with 12 oz of fluid (or more) and thus fulfill whatever function the 12 oz cups were intended for.

I’m sure my friend had equally compelling reasoning for choosing the 8 oz cups. This blog is not intended as a discussion of appropriate cup substitutions.

The point is: in that moment when the cups arrived the nature of the substitution served as a shining example that others don’t think the same as I do. This shocking thing is not that fact that others don’t think the same way we do. The shocking thing is that this comes as a surprise.

As we go through the day operating under the tacit assumption that the inner world of others is governed by the same laws and conditions as our own inner world, we have ample opportunity for misunderstanding and confusion.

If you could manage to suppress your rampant xenophobia, you would do for better to assume that you have no clue who or what the people you see are — a stranger in a strange land. You’d be far closer to the truth.

There are many types of love.

Love of family, love for your wife, husband, dog, children, parents, aunts, uncles, etc. — basically love for the individuals and collectives that can be found in your tribe.

Love of stuff, things, and states — such as sunsets, a great salad, beautiful music, inspiring painting, etc.

The list goes on and on… only limited by how loose you are willing to be in your usage of the word. “Oh, my god I just looooove that dress on you.”

All of the above are not included in the “Three Loves” mentioned in the title of this blog. Here are the three loves:

• Love what you do.
• Love the people you do it with.
• Love what you leave behind.

These three loves are not a product of accident, fashion, or preference. These three loves come from directed intentional effort — they take work. And, it is these three loves that will yield a sustained sense of worth — as in a life worth living.

Even a modicum of investigation will reveal that these loves must be the product of voluntary effort.

Name anything that you would “love” to do. Enter into the Twilight Zone, find a handy genie and wish to do that as your job. Before the end of the half-hour show you will realize that doing that thing (whatever it is) tarnishes. It will either become torture or humdrum at best.  Does it have to continue as humdrum or torture? No, but the kinds of people that show up in Twilight Zone episodes rarely have the skill set required to “learn to love it”. And, eventually, you’ll need to learn to love it. Automatic love will not sustain.

Interestingly enough, it turns out that when you include working for the benefit of others into your calculations of what to do, you easily slip into activities not based on your personal preferences and hungers.

But, this blog is not about how to select “what to do.” This blog is an acknowledgement that no matter what you choose to do eventually the glitter will fade and you will find yourself in the position of needing to voluntarize your love for doing it.

And, more to the point, this blog is an acknowledgement of the importance of having the love for what you do — voluntarized or not. Without that love you can’t go the next step.

No one says that you have to love what you are doing. That is not required. There is no law demanding it. If you are a world-class gardener maintaining a vibrant, healthy, beautiful park that may be enough for the powers that be. A great garden was needed and you provided the great garden — bare essentials have been satisfied. But, that is just the bare essentials. And, blessing available to you is missing.

Until you add “love for what you do” into the mix, the transformative potential will be missing. That would be unfortunate. Unfortunate to say the least.

You can do what you need to do, do it with the people you need to do it with, and leave behind the results of this. You could do that.

I believe that to love what you do, love the people you do it with, and love what you leave behind is the real sacrifice — or at least requires a sacrifice. Take “love what you leave behind” for example.

You can use effort, selection, will among other tools and skills to sculpture the nature of what you leave behind. Don’t do those things that you know you will regret, and do those things you believe right. Let’s say you get real good at this — really, really good. Even so, it will be impossible to not have a blemish or two in your record. If you figure it all out by the time you are 40 and all your actions are right actions from 40 on, then as you look back at your life there will be the temptation to regret not having figured it out by 30. If only I had gotten this stuff figured out by 30, then I could invested an additional decade into right action. And so it would go.

If you evaluate what you leave behind through the eyes of an auditor or an actuary, you can’t help but be disappointed. But, if you look back with the eyes of a parent watching a child singing and dancing in their first school play it will be different. Sure there was a missed line or two, and the kid totally forgot the melody, and godfrey daniels they didn’t button the costume in the back. None of that would distract from the perfection of the performance.

If you can sacrifice your attitude, set aside the multitude of shoulds and shouldn’ts implanted by well meaning (or not) parents and teachers, and give up your notion of how it should have been, then you may be able to “love what you leave behind.” This will take some sacrifice… just enough that ultimately you will no longer be who you are. Meaning the relative self, the personality will be set-aside.

Doing all of this loving what you do, loving the people you do it with, and loving what you leave behind will produce a substance — a tangible, sensible, mutable substance that can be bottled, spooned, and spread like jam. Granted the bottle wouldn’t be a physical bottle — but a substance none the less.

When I think of this substance as a royal jelly capable of feeding the Absolute, it feels right — not correct perhaps, but somehow in the right direction of what it would be like.

Still working my way through “Reality Is Broken” by Jane McGonigal.  Please don’t consider these blogs anything like a review. It is not my intention to give a fair and balanced review of her book in its entirety. I find bits and pieces of the book especially stimulating and choose to follow the threads of where they lead.

Here’s a quote from page 3 of the Introduction:

“Gamers want to know: Where, in the real world, is that gamer sense of being fully alive, focused, and engaged in every moment? Where is the gamer feeling of power, heroic purpose, and community….”

In video games we have missions. The mission may be to save the Princess Zelda from the evil Gannon. Or, the mission may be to find the broken crown, have it mended and resurrect the Skeleton King. Or, perhaps the mission may be to block a white square from falling off the edge of the screen by hitting it with our paddle sending it back toward our opponent’s side of the television.

In video games we take on these missions and treat them as important with very little fuss and muss. We don’t ask questions like: “What does it matter in the cosmic scheme of things if the Princess is saved from Ganon. Heck knowing the Princess she will probably just get herself captured again soon enough.” That doesn’t happen in a video game. We just plain don’t expect the mission to be of real, global significance. We either accept the mission or we don’t. And if we accept the mission we do everything required to accomplish it. And, while doing this we pour ourselves into the task — hook, line, and game controller.

Let’s stop for a brief moment, collect the question that is lingering on the edge of this conversation, and place it safely on the side for future reference. That question is a bit nebulous — in the early phases of stellar evolution. The exact nature of this question is unformed as yet. It has something to do with “Hey wait a minute, there is something important I’m supposed to be doing. There is something of significance that I promised myself I would remember.” Or, something equally worth addressing and equally beyond our reach at this very moment. Whatever it may be, let’s set it aside — just for the moment.

Having done that, let’s consider the following: Why not take on missions in real life? Why not give them the same commitment, daring, and do? Why not make dinner preparation a mission?  Imbue “making dinner” with the same sense of being fully alive, focus, and engaged in every moment? Why not let “making dinner” elicit the same feeling of power, heroic purpose, and community….”?

Is the mission of “making dinner” any less important than the mission of saving the dragon or fending of the damsel in distress? I hear through the aethers a few folk muttering to themselves: “Ah, I see where he is going with this. He is going to suggest we stop playing video games and devote our energies to so-called real world activities.”  Perish the thought. I say play those video games.  Tackle those cyberspace missions with gusto. Then after practicing the application of gusto apply that skill when engaged in daily activities.

Give the same intensity of focus to your preparation of dinner as you would in the preparation for a WoW Raid. In the larger scheme of things they can be equally important — a dinner no less so than clearing a dungeon of monsters.

Granted fixing dinner is not exotic. It is something that is done day after day — as a part of our regular routine. As such it has drifted into the grey of our lives.  We have given ourselves permission to slack-off and only participate halfheartedly during those grey activities. “It’s a grey activity, it doesn’t really matter how it is done. Throw some grub on the table and clear the dishes when the horde has finished gobbling it down.”

Video games hold the key. Video games can help us do this one important thing: ignore the question of significance. A mission is a mission is a mission.

“feeling of power, heroic purpose, and community” are words used to describe something. This something is not “feeling of power”. This something is not “heroic purpose”. This something is not “community”. Those are words used to describe aspects of what if feels like when this something is. I deliberately say “when this something is” rather than “when this something is happening” because this something is a noun not a verb. This something is a substance. When you execute a mission alive, focused, and engaged at every moment a substance is produced.

Please bring your attention into the present as you read the next sentence.

The production of this substance is not dependent upon the significance of the mission. The production of this substance is dependent upon your being alive, focused and engaged at every moment during the mission’s execution.

Again, if you can possibly manage to pay attention, try doing that during the next sentence.

In the sentence above I made the assertion that production of this substance is not dependent upon the significance of the mission.  I did not say that the nature of the mission was not of importance.  The nature of the mission will have a profound impact upon the alchemical results of your efforts. Put bluntly, clubbing baby seals will have a very different impact than preparing a nutritious meal for the community.

It does matter what you do. But, significance is not the yardstick you should be using to measure this. Maybe that is because significance is a mental thing and you should really be using more of your “heart” to make this kind of judgement.

Well, this blog wandered about a bit. Didn’t even get to the point I thought I was going to make. And definitely dropped a couple of real groaner puns along the way.  Now the question is, do I dump this and try again later, or hit the “Publish” button. If you reading this, then you’ll know which option I chose.

As you may guess from my blogs and multitude of websites, I have more than a few irons in the fire. You’ve probably heard the story: over commit, get excited about a zillion different things and start going in a million different directions.

That’s my story.

One of the exciting break-through projects during the past few months is Urthgame. On urthgame.com we use 3D gaming technology to create non-violent life-affirming interactive games. I started working with the G.O.D.D. team years and years ago partially as a result of nephew. Continue reading →