phone calls, Fortnite...
...and a pile of sand
I’m not going to remember this perfectly. Like everyone, my memory is shoddy and full of holes, plus I’m trying to go back 40+ years. What I do remember is this…
I remember the backyard of our home growing up. It was a home under constant renovation and repair. It was on a lot next to the corner, which happened to sit vacant and overgrown.
Our backyard was like any backyard. Spotty grass, chain link fences, dilapidated garage, and a pile of sand. Not a sandbox (at least that’s my memory), but a pile of sand that just seemed to spread out over time.
It was that pile of sand that caught my mind’s eye last night…
You see my brother called me last night. It’s not out of the ordinary these days, but it wasn’t expected either. He called to see if I wanted to get online and play Fortnite.
To be honest, we haven’t been all that close until recently. It’s not that we were distant or anything, we just led different lives in different areas of the country, with different priorities. Our interactions were limited more by time than by any sort of issue.
However, due to some family circumstances we’ve been facing, we’re talking a lot more these days. And, it’s nice. It’s good to hear from him and share what each of us are going through.
But, back to the connection between a phone call, Fortnite, and a pile of sand. After the call, my spouse laughed a little and said, “Was your brother asking you to come out and play.”
Which in all honesty he was, and it was nice to be asked. He was going to talk to his son and then we were going to get online and mess around for a couple of hours. Usually when we do this, we just get on the phone and talk while we play. We catch up on each other’s lives while roaming in a virtual countryside.
The moment we hung up, following our last game, that pile of sand flashed in my mind. Sometimes when we’re online we play the traditional Fortnite games, but last night we were messing around in their Save the World sandbox. In this version it’s you and your team against the AI rather than fighting against other players.
Each match has some objectives to complete and hostile environments to overcome. Our match included a lot of building and prepping for a big attack. I watched as he built, helping out where I could. He’s much better at it than I am. I can build, but he gets the strategy, so in this case I just supported.
Long story short, we completed the objectives, and his preparation helped make that happen. It was a good time online, playing with that third object while we talked about life and everything we’re experiencing. It was an escape, but not in the painkiller kind of way.
When I hung up the phone that memory of a pile of sand in the backyard flashed across my eyes. When we were younger, my brother and I would often spend time in that pile of sand building intricate battlefields for various action figures.
There were tunnels and bridges, walls and gateways, sentries and attackers. We’d spend hours out there playing, imagining, constructing, and eventually destroying these concoctions. It was Fortnite before there was Fortnite, our own live action Save the World.
Those moments in the backyard, before I hit high school and my brother middle school were good ones. They were respites from the world for me, escapes from the reality of being picked on in middle school, and always feeling like an outsider no matter what group I was a part of.
I often talk with my clients about the habits we cultivate when we’re younger, especially when we’re uncomfortable or facing uncertainty. We repeat patterns of our teenage years until they no longer work. Then we continue to repeat them until they cause us or the people we care about harm.
These are early ingrained habits of safety that we perpetuate until we realize we have to become an adult. The escape of games were often one of those for me. When I was feeling uncomfortable or out of my element, I could always escape to a game where I was competent and my characters confident.
It was one of my painkillers, a socially acceptable escape from a reality that seemed hostile or unpredictable. I still play video games (obviously), but over the last few years I’ve traded the painkilling aspect for the social aspect. It’s not about escape, it’s about fun and connection.
We can only change habits with intention. We have to understand why something is a habit, interrogate its nuances and tendrils, experience when we feel compelled to use it versus when it’s a choice. Intentionality is simply the ability to say to ourselves “I am doing this because…”
Often, that can be enough of a pause to help us enact something different if we’re only seeking to kill some pain or anxiety. Sometimes we do it anyway despite our intentionality, which is fine because once we know something, we can’t unknow it.
Once I figured out that video games are sometimes painkillers for me, I have to admit to myself that I’m experiencing pain. And, when I do that, I eventually have to deal with it or risk further harm to myself and my relationships.
I find it interesting that my most read piece here over the last year is the entry on painkillers from almost a year ago.
It says to me that there’s something there for each of us to explore, as well as imagine ways to constructively engage our pain rather than ignore it.
Many of those action figures we played with in that sand pile were G.I. Joes. In the 80s there was a G.I. Joe cartoon series where they would often end with some kind of learning lesson. The last has always stuck with me, and I think it sums up the idea of intentionality nicely.
They would often end the cartoon by saying “Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.”