Any game ever invented can be thought of as fun, as a waste of time, or both.
Football, chess, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, poker, League of Legends, fantasy football, checkers, cricket: the list of games people play is endless. Human beings create games, play games, and enjoy games … and often question their relationship to their games.
In kirism, we use the phrase “do the next right thing” as a simple way of reminding ourselves that our ethics matter. We don’t do just one or two right things each day: we try to live a continually principled life. But how do you judge the rightness, appropriateness, or morality of the next thing? Is it wrong to play a video game for two hours straight or might that sometimes be exactly the next right thing?
Let’s try to tease this apart a little bit. First, let’s not go down the rabbit hole of trying to decide whether a certain game is too dangerous, hazardous, or otherwise unsuitable: whether, for example, football produces too many concussions. That’s a different sort of question and a different sort of discussion. Our particular question is: how can we judge whether gaming is serving or not serving our life purpose choices?
Let’s say that you’ve spent five hours doing a hard, useful thing, for instance helping your neighbor repair his fire-damaged house. How could we possibly begrudge you an hour or two of gaming after that? Well, but what if certain other important things are also on your agenda, say having a hard chat with your daughter about her drinking, helping your preferred candidate get elected, or attending to your half-completed novel? Now how should we think about those two hours of gaming? Are they still legit? Or did they get morally murkier?
What if you’ve already been having conversations with yourself about your gaming? What if you’ve decided, or are very near to deciding, that you are gaming too much? Now what are we to think about those two hours of gaming? Yes, in one sense you certainly earned them. But even though they are earned … are they the right thing to do? To switch examples, you may have earned your glass or two of wine—but what if you are in recovery?
I think you can see where we’re heading. In kirism we use the phrase “taking a step to the side” to stand for the idea that we have to make decisions right in the moment and in each particular context in order to know what the next right thing is; and, so as to provide ourselves with the space to make those decisions, we need to “step to the side” and consider. This is a simple but powerful version of counting to ten before acting too hastily. By stepping to the side, we get to evaluate whether or not those two hours of gaming, in that exact context, is or isn’t the next right thing.
We do need our games. We need our simple pleasures. We need our recreations. We need our outlets. But if we are addicted to them, obsessed with them, using them to flee from freedom, mesmerized and entranced to the point that we aren’t living our life purposes, well, all of that must get factored into the equation. An addiction is proof positive that we aren’t doing a beautiful job of making ourselves proud by our efforts. An obsession is the equivalent of us falling short—in our own estimation. We must exercise caution!
Like you, I love my games. But I love living my life purposes more. For me, that is the better path and the better bet. If you’ve been debating whether or not you’re a bit too hooked on your favorite game, give the above some consideration. I would never try to separate a man from his favorite game! But that isn’t to say that the man himself might not step to the side, think things through, and make the decision to shorten his gaming stint—or skip it completely.
To assist you in thinking about all this, I recommend two of my recent books, Lighting the Way and The Power of Daily Practice. And now, back to your games … or your life purposes.
—
