The Exudes of Life: A Game Worthwhile Playing

By Ashrei Ima Sari

AI Generated art

Imagine life as a game. A board game, a computer game, a war game, a collaborative game, a single player game, a multiplayer game, an online game, an app game, or a good old fashioned game of running around outdoors with other kids. Whichever type of game you like playing most - imagine life as that. 

Picture the details of your game of life. Imagine the other players or NPCs (non-player characters) in it. Imagine the background, the landscape and city horizon surrounding the current game settings. 

If imagining life as a game is a little difficult, imagine yourself in the movie Jumanji, the book Ready Player One, or any other artistic work that has us living within a gamified environment. 

Within child psychology circles it is known that many important life lessons and critical social skills can and will be learned through play. Games teach us to take turns, to collaborate, to be patient, to lose, to win, to be competitive, to give in, to stop mid-game, to push until the end, to be loud, to be quiet, to be considerate, to stand up for ourselves. Games, whether we want it or not, are the best tools we ever received to learn how to live our lives. 

If Exodus would be turned into a game, a combination of Monopoly and an escape room - we would be able to experience for ourselves the tension of being the slave, of identifying with the story at hand. Games have that power; they allow us to identify with a story that crosses through imagination, ingenuity, limitation, faith and hope. 

In these modern days, where games are becoming intrusive and addictive -- games have lost their status as the holy grail of education and socialization. 

Too many games are played as solitary games, isolating us instead of allowing us to further socialize and improve our lives and the lives of our children. On the other hand, too many games are played online, eliminating the direct access we have to establishing networks of support and flourishing within our own neighbourhoods and communities. While there are ways to use online games to our advantage, as they allow us to gamify our life, stay connected with someone we love or learn new skills in a fun and engaging way; as a whole, modern society forgot the important role that games have on directing us towards being better people. 

There are those who say that “a family that works out together is a family that stays together” or “a family that prays together is a family that stays together” or “a family that cooks together is a family that stays together.” While the discussion of why so many families these days are falling apart is an important one, it is not the point needed to be made here. What I believe is the important statement to make is “a family that plays together is a family that stays together.” 

This is true for families, as it is true for communities. A community that learns how to ‘play together’ in constructive ways will be a stronger community for it. Game nights such as Bingo, Bridge or communal trivia nights and scrabble tournaments are thought of as old dated, yet they allow for a community to stay engaged in each other’s lives and allows the roots of the community to keep breathing and nourish all those who are part of that community. 

If we consider the story of the Exodus from Egypt and think of it as part of a game of life, we can start placing the characters into their roles as leaders and pawns across the chest board of biblical history. The goal of the Exodus game? Leave Egypt and reach freedom. 

Once that game is won, life goes on. Life, after all, is no ordinary game. Life throws us from one chest board to another. At times, life just picks us up in the middle of a game and places us in an entirely different board game altogether. If I started out playing Risk, G-d can decide it is simply time to pick my piece up and place me back down in the middle of a game of Sorry. 

After winning the game of leaving Egypt, G-d sets up a new game for the Israelites to play; The Desert Sprawl. A game of 42 steps leading towards the destination: Entering the land of Israel. All the while, the people of Israel are accumulating more understandings of the game of life they are playing, and slowly trying to advance between the steps that are set before them.

These 42 steps are known as the 42 stops the Israelites had to make along their long route towards the promised land. Yet, like a donkey following a carrot, the Israelites kept going despite their pain, their fears, their struggles in faith and in between themselves. They kept going, until, one day, they won this game too; they entered the land of Israel.

But the game of the Israelites, who had now upgraded to being the Jewish people, was far from over. Such is the game of life - it just keeps on going. From stage to stage, from map to map, from board to board, from path to path. We take one step, then another, and with deep faith, hope that we are understanding the roles of the game - because it appears to us that not all roles were provided. The Jewish people have deep faith that the roles were provided and we have been arguing about them ever since. 

And so, more games were won, and many games were lost. We left Egypt, we struggled in the desert, we entered Israel, we struggled with haters, we built a first temple, we lost a war, we built a second temple, we fought amongst ourselves, we lost faith, we lost land, we lost our home, we lost our direction, we wrote it all down so we are not lost forever, we lost in pogroms, we lost in terror of ‘the final solution’, we won with reclaiming the right to build our state, we fought and fought and fought again to stay in our own legally bought land. We kept on surviving. But now, surviving does not seem to be enough. 

What if there is another level we can play? What if there is another upgrade that needs to be installed? What if there is another ‘leveling-up’ that is awaiting us all? What if there is a way to replay the game of Exodus in our day and age? 

What if we escape not a specific country, but a mindset of narrow thinking? What if we escape the need to isolate, complain, and live with a lack of responsibility? What if the game that we can play now is not a ‘Who’s The Leader?’ or ‘Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?’ or ‘Among Us’ or ‘Sleeping Queens.’ What if the game we are called to play is a collaborative one, like Mole Rats in Space?

What if each one of us was a pawn on an epic scale chest board, and we cannot see the size of this board, nor know all the players that are on our team in this massive-multiplayer-game? What if it is your responsibility to push a button that will ignite the freedom process for someone else halfway around the world? What if it is your kindness to your neighbour, or your picking up the garbage off the streets that ends up fixing your entire neighbourhood?

  We can choose to keep being the victims of our life’s situations. We can keep feeling helpless and so very small in comparison to the grandeur of the world and the systems that run our lives. Or, we can choose to look at what is under our control; what can we improve and make better? We can choose to improve our own live’s and the lives of those around us.

By neglecting to choose to free ourselves of the perception that many problems are not our responsibility to solve, we allow the goal of the game of life to wilt and die. By choosing to own up to whatever responsibility we can master, we are giving this massive-multiplayer game of life a chance to be won.

What is the goal of this epic game of our lives? It is the exodus that will lead us all to a better world. A world where we can trust each other to be kind and helpful. A world where we know that if we enter a government office we will be greeted with a smile, with kindness and with a person that is there to make our life easier. It is when someone notices that we are being taken advantage of and they do not stay silent, instead they speak up and help us out. 

It is a world that allows us all, by collaborating together, to bring kindness to our every day, in our every moment. When we do that, we finish the first step of this game of modern mental exodus; that is when we are no longer enslaved to the hopeless and scary narrative so many of us adapted or grew on. It is when we make the choice to unite in a vision that will lead towards a hopeful and brighter future - simply because we can imagine a better future for ourselves and for the next generations.  

It does not matter which piece on this massive game you are -- every single one of us is needed to complete this game of ours. 

The goal? Nothing less than our salvation. Our ability to enter an era of peace, of love, of collaboration, of curiosity, of playfulness, of support, of returning to our faith and our communities, of having respect towards ourselves and towards our own parents. Of keeping the streets and sidewalks clean, of not getting into unnecessary fights, of understanding that most of the things are simple misunderstandings, of being open to the fact that we can all make mistakes and that is ok -- no matter who you are or what you have done in your past; the choice to join this game is open to you. You are invited to become part of this epic game of our modern mental exodus. Do not wait for someone to save you -- you have the power to become the very piece that starts moving our game in the right direction. We are waiting for you to start playing your role - we are waiting for you to start playing your game. We need you. We need your kindness. We need your ideas. We need your smile. We need your hug. We need your care and your love. 

I know, this might sound overly optimistic or corny to many -- that is my role; to plant the seed of this epic level of potential vision of salvation in your mind; it is up to you to do something with it. 

This Passover -- know -- our salvation time has come. It is up to you to step up and do, with kindness, patience and love, all that you can do to reach out to others and do what you can to become the change in the world that you wish to see. Be the change, so that change can follow in your wake. 

I invite you to join this epic game of salvation. It is meant to be fun, filled with curiosity, filled with love.

The caveat is a big one; we must fix ourselves first. We need to ‘level up’ our mental and emotional state so that we can make this happen. We need to walk through our own turmoil and storms so that we come out the other side stronger and more united. 

Like the Israelites in Egypt, we need to make the choice to leave our previous narrow ways behind us. It is a choice each one of us must make alone. Choose to join our game - and the waters of salvation will split before you, leading you towards a world of abundance and potential of growth and expansion. Though the way there is not without struggle. 

The Israelites won their game of exudes when they left Egypt. Not all Israelites chose to play. Those who chose to stay behind in their narrow ways perished and were lost over time. Those who chose to leave had to walk through the desert and go through a 42 step process of ‘leveling-up’ their mental capacity before they could enter the promised land. 

This Passover, think of what ‘leveling-up’ your mental capacity would mean. What would make you ready to enter a world where salvation and true unity and peace between all nations is present. Picture it, imagine it, make that image as vivid and real in your mind as you possibly can, and know - that by planting your own vision of the days of redemption and true peace in your mind, you have already agreed to start playing this game. Once this vision is planted, it cannot be uprooted, it will not be undone. 

A family that plays together stays together. A community that plays together lasts longer. A world that plays together can turn around the currents of our worst enemies and turn our worst fears into treasures that we cannot yet grasp. Our time of salvation is here - it is a massive-multiplayer-game, one I hope you are willing to play. 

Consider this your official invitation. Are you ready to play?

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