How to play the game

Not long ago, I wrote about making peace with the idea of not having free will, of choosing to see life as a fantastic story that’s already been written. It’s a nice thought, this idea of being an actor in a play.

But it leaves you with a very practical question. If you’re just following a script, how do you make sure you’re playing your part well? It would be a shame to be in a great show and not enjoy the performance. So this is my way of trying to get the most out of it.

I remember when I turned 20, I had this feeling of having been teleported here. As if everything I had lived through before was just the opening cutscene of a video game, and the real game was only just beginning. It was around that time I watched an interview of an old Alain Delon. Here was a man who, by all accounts, had played the game to its fullest: fame, money, the wildest stories. And sure, maybe I just wanted to see myself in one of the most handsome men of all time, but his conclusion reasonated. He spoke with a deep nostalgia. His life, the part where he felt truly alive, seemed as if it had been over in a flash. Now, he was just waiting for death to come.

Back then, the COVID pandemic had just ended in Europe, and I had only one fear: letting my life slip away. My friends would say there were signs, but I think this is when I really started to go off the rails. A business I’d started with a friend took off, and with money suddenly coming in, I dropped out of my studies, changed countries, traveled to the four corners of the world, and started a bunch of unrelated activities. I learned to fly small planes, then took up horse riding. I ran a marathon. I swam so many kilometers of crawl that the local pool threatened to ban me… It was all a beautiful, chaotic gift.

But a gift like that comes with a certain weight. A feeling of privilege, and a fear of wasting it. So, to honor the opportunity, I did the only thing that made sense to me: I tried to formalize the chaos.

Finding a usecase to these math classes

Imagine a timeline with different periods of your life, and a set of rectangles you can place on it. The height of a rectangle represents the fun you get from it, and its length represents the time it costs you. But here’s the catch: some blocks can only be placed in certain periods. Let’s take the “staying in a hostel in the middle of Africa to meet other backpackers” block. It’s a lot of fun, but hard to place in the “old age” segment, especially if the “start a family” block has already been placed. Conversely, some blocks like “taking a luxury train accross Eurasia” are perfectly compatible with being older, so it’s not strategic to place them at the beginning.

Even though not as trivial as choosing the highest block, it’s relatively easy to choose what to do using this model. The main difficulty isn’t placing the rectangles, it’s discovering them in the first place. Before going to Zambia out of pure randomness, I couldn’t have even imagined the existence of these hostels filled with curious individuals, or that I would get so much joy from meeting them.

So here is my conclusion. I’m lucky enough to be able to do a lot of things, and it’s my responsibility to discover as many of these rectangles as I can without forgetting to enjoy the ones that won’t be around forever.

P.S. In the spirit of discovering new things, I thought I’d share my own list of ‘blocks’ here. Maybe it’ll spark an idea for your own timeline. Also if you want to join, let me know.