Face Me And Scream

Written by: Michael Enger

In the idle hours of the night, when I am busy working on some project or other, it is easy to be distracted. The working becomes slow and drudging and I grow ever weary at looking at the increasingly complicated and disorganized lines of code. In such times it is nice to turn to my laptop where I usually have some form of Solitaire open so that I can rest my mind in between sessions of cognitive labor… but I don’t always win.

I have discovered that the best way to play Solitaire, when it is done as a distraction from work, is to play until you win. You keep going with every failed attempt to beat the random situations and you return to work once you finally do. This takes the control out of your hands and gives you a definite sense of completion. Even though you could end up playing for a long time and not winning it means that when you finally do, you have no excuse to say “just one more”. Having a defined ending scenario, albeit random, leaves you never dissatisfied with the short break, leaving you with the sense that the given time period which is paradoxically clearer than if you were to give yourself a set time period to avoid working.

But this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. This seemingly random justification for my extended bouts of idle playfulness is completely uninteresting even to me, but seeing beyond the pixelated cards that shift and move at your every whim there seems to be an underlying idea that Solitarie is rooted in: self-challenge.

And the suits are like the different types of people that live in the world!The game of Solitaire is played alone; although you could argue that you are actually playing against the computer, you are only struggling to accomplish a simple task by following strict rules. There is no counter-play to your actions and, aside from the clock ticking away every second of your diversion, you are under no pressure to complete the task. It is, in essence, a simulation of self improvement.

Self improvement is the progress of forced (or coerced, if you will) evolution of an individual which mimics the natural process: a (relatively) slow process of changes that will result in a betterment of the subject. Whether it is to learn to play an instrument, to be a better husband or to dress yourself more elegantly, every self-improvement project comes from the person’s desire to fulfill certain criteria that were previously unattainable, all done within the confines of his/her life. And, much like Solitaire, it doesn’t always end in success.

Life is short, compared to the span of human civilization, but very long compared to the everyday workings of the human mind. You have a lot of time to grow, to better yourself, but you don’t have a lot of time to do the same thing everyday. The monotonous stability of daily traditions and patters are easy to get into, but in the end are counter-productive to your personal evolution. Sometimes you just have to accept that you’ve run out of possible moves and you need to start a new game.