A Game by Any Other Name Sucks Just as Much

I’m back! And I must apologize to my Followers for imposing a forty-day blog-fast upon them. Its objective was unclear anyway. It just seemed like a thing to do. The value of randomness is underrated.

What has been happening during the break? In my naïve mind, based on admittedly tainted observations, I have come to one sweeping generalization - that there are only two modes of thinking. Now don’t get me wrong – there are many things to think about. But we think about them either in terms of their direct relevance to ourselves or in abstract universalist terms.

(I know its time to lay off the coffee when I start hallucinating philosophy.)

So there I was, away on holiday, minding my business and being harmless old me (aka strategically avoiding The Ex). Who should call me but Ailis, asking me to visit her in Malindi. My response: “You broke us up, remember?” She hung up immediately. You must understand: she was on the East Coast, I was on the ”West Coast”; and yet the space between us was still too small for my pride.

Later on, thinking about it, I realized that the whole relationship/fling/whatever thing had really been a series of games. Not the kind of games one enjoys; no. Rather, power plays; the kind that can be played, won or lost in total ignorance of the fact! There is probably much less to it than my fertile imagination is shadowboxing with. And we must bear in mind that my experience in romantic relationships is wanting, which makes me the last person to dare to comment on matters cupid. But I’ll go ahead playing intellectual dice with far-fetched ideas anyway.

It is like this. In relationships, one member may unilaterally decide to set an ‘exam’ for the other party - a little test, in a controlled environment, where the subject’s behavior is tested in the furnace of truth. This beats asking direct probing questions because – hey let’s face it and grow up already – actions speak louder than words. It is hard to ‘misquote’ a thing when you do it. Therefore, the partner who seeks to really know the other sets a practical experiment. Sometimes the candidates spot these practical puzzles from a mile away and ace them or expertly dodge them, sometimes they spot them from a mile away and flunk the quiz intentionally - just for the hilarity of it, ambitiously aspiring to transcendence. Most often a candidate, operating within the bliss of ignorance, actually completes an examination on whose outcome depends the very future of the relationship! Is that enough theoretical background?

The summarized version of all this beating about the bush is that these games madden me! There should be a law! For example, if someone expresses a desire NOT to continue a relationship, as Ailis did earlier on, you’d think a good opportunity had presented itself to demonstrate respect for their wishes and ability to comply – even if things aren’t going your way at all. In my case I immediately agreed - in fact, an instant more, and I would have thrown in a ‘Heil Hitler’ and a matching salute. But by so doing, I failed her test. The correct answer, apparently, would have been to put up a massive fight to reject her so-called wishes to break up. Her puzzle demanded that I, the candidate, demonstrate jealousy, passion, zeal, fire, will, stubbornness and lust in the mold of Lorenzo, Hector, Alejandro, Luiz or whatever the blazes they call male protagonists in Latin American soap operas nowadays. My reaction – a flat “Alright let’s break up.” *yawns & arm stretches* – betrayed failure to grasp course content, low concentration, poor effort, little understanding, limited ability to accurately conceptualize a problem. Naturally, this earned me a failing grade. Yet quite apart from the dire aspect of my score, we can enter a debate about the justice of administering exams to unwitting candidates while making their correct answers so convoluted as to defy common sense. Try me.

Somebody say “Trick Question”. It is a favorite weapon of our womenfolk. Such is life. But that’s a whole other blog.