Recently, I’ve noticed two things:
- I’ve begun playing FreeCell again, but my emotional profile while playing is unrecognizable.
- I always tell myself that it’s enough to “try my best”, but I can’t actually figure out what “trying my best” means.
These two observations have been on my mind lately, and I believe they’re connected on a deeper level. This is my best (slightly rambling) explanation of the connection in my mind. FreeCell is a variant of Solitaire that looks something like this:
Daniel, one of my best friends from Harvard, introduced me to the game over a year ago; soon, I was hooked. Not to just winning the game, but rather to lowering my best time, increasing my percentage of wins, and improving all those gameplay statistics that the app so helpfully provides. FreeCell soon captured my spare time, and the worst part of it was that I could not let myself lose. And when I did (which was rare, given the amount of time I put into staring at a game in advance before I made any moves) I felt an intense frustrated compulsion—sort of like that frustration when you think you’ve caught a bug in your code, and it turns out to not fix your problem, and you ask yourself “did I just spend time doing something pointless for the last hour?” but then continue doing it anyway.
I’m sure that FreeCell did improve my mental strength; it definitely satisfied my competitive streak, and entertained me on the quarter-day flights to-and-from California. When school eventually took over last summer, I stopped playing. I tried to put my finger on exactly why (for this post)—but couldn’t find a plausible explanation for why my behavior suddently changed. So to try and find out, I returned to it this past week. Returning to the jail of FreeCell has made me realize the (terrifying?) changes in my perspective from nearly two years ago to now. Namely, I’m losing more than ever before.
I’ve lost focus. I’ll be distracted by the chirps of birds outside my window and, regardless of the seconds ticking away on the FreeCell timer, pause just a moment to indulge in a pleasant fantasy in which a bird’s song becomes a song for me.
I’ve lost motivation. While I admit that I still begin games with the intention to win or beat my best time, this intention mysteriously disappears after the first few moves. I haven’t quite parsed this phenomenon yet.
I’ve lost games. Nowadays, I take the greedy approach to solving the puzzle; I believe my win ratio is probably 50% (as compared to 98% from two years ago), and my rank on the scoreboard is probably horrendous (I haven’t checked). But it’s fun! An exercise in how greedy heuristics often fail.
I’ve lost the high and low waves of frustration and excitement. Perhaps it’s true that you need the intense lows to feel incredible highs. These have melted away into a nice fuzzy feeling when I win, and a ¯\(ツ)/¯ when I don’t.
And finally, I’ve lost the compulsion to always try my best.
Focus, motivation, high rankings, trying your best… these are all traits prized in the classroom and probably by every employer. But for me, I happily lost these traits in my games of FreeCell and beyond. Being perfect is no longer who I am. It’s not like it ever was; I was only ever “trying my best.” As cliche as it sounds, when “trying your best” becomes striving for an impossible perfection, nothing is ever satisfactory. (Also, isn’t it funny that “as cliche as it sounds” has now become a cliche?)
FreeCell has shown me that I now live more at my best, rather than strive to be best. I prize the momentary indulgences of curiosity and imagination, and the silence in my mind that has replaced the constant chaos of seeing a million mistakes and wanting to fix them. Ironically, it is this change in mindset that has led to not only some of the best and happiest times of my life, but also the best research I have ever done and the most meaningful music I have ever performed (I can’t say the same for my FreeCell games, but… ¯\(ツ)/¯).
I’ve been told so many times that “all that matters is trying your best”; I’ve gone through many an exam or project telling myself that all will turn out fine if only I try my best. But is there really a “best”? I’d argue that, at least for myself, I can’t see there being an end to “best”; there is always something more to improve, another second to trim, another goal to achieve or statistic to beat. And if I can never try my best… should I try to?