Jenga Blocks

It was a weeknight and I was out with a group of friends at a painfully stereotypical tech corporate party. I had already gone to my fair share of these throughout the summer. A couple at VC shops, one at a startup, and now one at a pretty large public company. We barely knew anyone who worked there but we figured it would be fun to poach a few free beers and American Apparel company branded t-shirts while they tried to poach us from the places we were interning.

The price we paid was to sit through a few painful keynote speakers and slideshows full of one-liners from Steve Blank and Charlie Munger.

“We want to do our part to make the world a better place.”
“We’re a public company that actually turns a profit, unlike our friends across the way at Salesforce”. I was wearing my Salesforce backpack, which got a couple of good chuckles from the people standing behind me.
“Feel free to grab some swag as you go, don’t walk out with the alcohol though.”

All laughs aside, it was a fun night of hanging out with all the other terrible tech people we Twitter-knew that were there soaking up the IPAs and cocktails. A group of six of us decided to head over to a nearby bar and continue our night. A few Moscow Mules and deceivingly small tequila shots and we were on our way. We sat down at a booth nearby the main bar, only to find a tin of Jenga blocks poured out onto the table. Looking around I noticed that all the other tables had different games and cards.

“It’s good we got literally the hardest game to play drunk.” We all had a good laugh. “Jesus, I’m shit at Jenga even when I’m sober.”

It turned out to be a blast. We ended up playing a variation of speed Jenga that resembles speed chess. The most interesting part was that people had written all over the blocks. The obvious vulgarities, so-and-so was here, and phone numbers, but also there were the open-ended questions that were clearly supposed to be used for a Truth-Or-Jenga variant.

Truth be told, it was the perfect thing to have at a table among friends. We had something to fiddle with and it got us talking and off our phones.

“This one says, ‘Who’s the biggest tool at the table?’” The table shook with our laughter as I was in the middle of extracting a snug bottom block and it all came down. “The fact that we need to debate this is bad.”

We all took turns with a pen drawing and squeezing our own messages onto the blank space available on the blocks. “What kind of message should I put on there? Go for the ‘wow, that is horrific’ or the kind of thing that makes someone soft smile?” I chimed in, “Yeah, I feel like I have so much bad karma to undo from arguing with strangers on Twitter that I should probably go with making a stranger smile.”

—

I had always hated Jenga growing up. It’s a game that's easy to get bored of and the setup time is usually longer than the time you spend playing. And it’s usually awful for little kids. They spent so much time and effort meticulously building up a tower of blocks only to have it all come crashing down. And if you’re playing with more than two people, there isn’t a winner, there’s just the idiot that knocked the blocks down.

Recently, I’ve used Jenga quite frequently as an analogy for the difficulties that people often face as aspects of their lives changes. The easiest changes are made near the top of the tower, the opinions we hold lightly, the people, places, and things we’ve only known a short time. Further down are the parts of us that carry more weight. They’re physically burdened by the weight of what rests above. Moving them could mean toppling everything that sits above, maybe even below. The manner is which they are removed has to be fitting. Sometimes a swift yank, sometimes a gentle tapping.

At the very bottom are the blocks fundamental to ourselves. They are not defined by our conviction or their severity but are directly tied to who we are. Our virtues and sense of purpose. Our health and our families. There is no easy way to change the position of these blocks without risking toppling the entire tower. Sometimes it is our decision, sometimes it isn’t.

What do you do when it all comes crashing down?

Well, you rebuild the tower just like the angry teary-eyed toddler. Meticulously, methodically, placing every last block back into place. Compared to the fraction of a second that it took come crashing down, how long does it take to build back up? Running your hands along the creases and gaps, straightening out the edges, well aware that if you want to play the game it will have to come tumbling back down eventually.

That is a harrowing truth that just about everyone hears but refuses to believe. Everything comes crashing down. It takes an indescribable amount of effort to create order from disorder and it is impossible to maintain. Refusing to rebuild and play the game is to live a life void of purpose and substance. To fill it with the superficial, to not care deeply enough about anything to a point where there isn’t even a tower to have crash down. The only solution is to procedure with great care and to learn to love rebuilding, because you’ll do it a lot.

—

“What did you put on your block?”
“It says, 'Make Love, Not Logical Fallacy.'"
“You’re an idiot.”