My brain finds it very soothing. I get hits of dopamine when I make a match; I see it in my mind sometimes when I’m falling asleep. I feel like I’m in sort of a relaxed trance when I play it. At some point I realized I didn’t stop after I thought “time to stop and do xyz,” so I became being more mindful about choosing when to play it.
None of that has to do with real life. But I’d like to share what playing Candy Crush1 and my inclination to See Metaphor in All Things has brought to mind.
About Failure
I don’t like failing. (Presumably neither do most people.) I’m a little stronger on “people pleaser” and “perfectionist” lines than average, though age (+ philosophy + practice) has calmed both those characteristics down. (Maybe I am in fact calmer than average at this point in my life on both these axes, which would be pretty exciting2.)
I find something very comforting about losing in Candy Crush.
For much of my life, failure (which is inevitable if I actually want to try interesting/exciting/fun/world-expanding things) was something I absolutely dreaded. I felt like the possibility of failure and the ensuing icky feelings were a reasonable and legitimate factor in deciding to not engage in something.
Which is somewhat tragic. Especially since the more a person is willing to risk failure, the more likely it is that some of the many things they’ll try might work out. It’s a numbers game. And that doesn’t even include what you learn from failure, all the character growth benefits and increased skills and experience you pick up.
In Candy Crush, sometimes it is impossible to win the board. It’s rigged against you. You run out of lives or power ups and it’s just impossible. (Unless you want to pay money and that’s a nope.)
Once I started realizing this, I kind of relaxed into it. In fact, I even stopped using power ups. Because an extraordinary thing happened. I would not win the board. I would fail. I would not win the board many times in a row. I’d lose all my lives and have to stop.
This may not seem big to you. But to me, who is not used to failure being okay, it was pretty major. I’d fail and try again and fail and eventually I just couldn’t do anything else. I’m used to that being stressful. And bad. And I’m used to trying to avoid it.
But this was a game. Supposed to be fun. And my brain liked this game. So I sort of gave up feeling pressure when I fail to beat the board. And ride the wave of even though I enjoy the strategy (and there is definitely strategy), sometimes the strategy just doesn’t work and you lose. Multiple times in a row.
I began to see that even if I lost multiple times in a row, it‘s okay. Sometimes I stay on the same board for more than a week. I just keep losing and losing and losing.
And eventually, I get enough combos and combos of combos that it works out. I began to feel this weird calm when I failed a board, even for weeks—that if I just wait long enough, eventually, it will work.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. That’s not at all what life is like. There is no guarantee that if you wait patiently, it will “all work out.” In fact, that’s a fairly asinine life philosophy.3
It’s observable that people get sick and die. Crazy accidents happen. People have epic failures and make mistakes with severe, long-lasting consequences. Sitting around and hoping it will “get better” without our own input is nonsensical. And sometimes, even despite the greatest human efforts, things still don’t work. Life doesn’t always “work out” or send you the striped and wrapped candy combo you need to win this thing. Sometimes it truly does just suck.
But this experience of failing and being patient and continuing to fail, knowing that you keep getting different combos on the same board each try… that did something for me.
I started not minding the failure, and started waiting to see how long it takes for things to start looking up. Sometimes I get really close but still lose. Sometimes I am nowhere near winning the board.
And it really does seem to me to be a metaphor for life. Because life does give different things. And even if it’s not working now, wait and see. Things do shift. Things do change. Different opportunities come up. Not to say that we don’t sometimes die and it’s game over. But if it’s not, and we’re still alive, it is kind of astonishing how different candy combos do come up, if we are looking out for them. No matter how many times you fail, if you aren’t dead and you keep playing, eventually combos come up.
And I do think the world is that way. There is so much incredible science and transformative technology that we’ve discovered and that there is still left to discover. For every relationship we lose and are sad about, there are new people being born and new interactions and friendships to discover. For every activity I don’t have access to anymore, there are new things to learn and new things to try. Failing isn’t tragic. Wait for the next try, and see what combos come up.
That took longer to explain than I thought it would, so I’ll save Part II: Leveling Up for another time.
Or, my version, Cookie Jam Blast (TM)
Even if I’m not, just being in a place of entertaining the real possibility that experience + philosophy + practice might have significantly produced that degree of growth is pretty exciting
(Though as someone on the extreme of the “strategize/plan/put in effort/try to control all the factors” continuum, there is some benefit to spending some time on the “chillax do nothing and see what happens” end of the spectrum.)
(1) I really enjoyed this!
(2) It reminds me of a book I started last summer but stopped reading: "SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully." I have to remember if it's in Seattle (in one of the packing boxes) or in New York. Either way, I want to finish it.
(3) I have an article in the works about thinking metaphorically, which I realized is one of the reasons I like Barry Lopez so much.