The eleventh of January

By seeing life as a game, your lightness of spirit will make problems seem easier

I'll agree that a good mood does make things seem easier. I might even be inclined to argue that it makes things actually easier. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with seeing life as a game, though.

Partly, it depends on what sort of game. Most actual games that I can think of right now are what the economic game theorists call zero-sum games: each player or team can improve its own position only by putting its opponents in a worse position. Don't think of life as that sort of game. Some things in life are like that, but a lot of things aren't like that.

There are non-zero-sum games, too, but the only ones I can think of at the moment are ones that are normally only used by economists and philosophers to help them think about commerce and rationality and things like that. Funnily enough, such games are often described by simplifying a situation from real life. Monopoly could go either way, depending on which way you look at it. True, everyone could make money in a given round, but in the end, the point of the game isn't to see how much money you can make, but to see who can bankrupt all the other players. Only one player can do that each time you play. I suppose games you play with small children, like peek-a-boo, tend to be non-zero-sum games.

Anyway, if you do look at life as a game, remember that relationships matter: relationships with your family, with your friends, with your neighbours, with your colleagues, with the shopkeeper at the corner dairy, and with God. The last of those might turn out to be particularly important when the game is up.

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