Author: Giggleklutz

Gamer mom to the fabulous Honeyshuckleex and Sackbotbbq. Keeper of the blog. Lover of puzzle games of many types. Keep up with our adventures on our podcast: Collab Not Multiplayer.

Zero Sum or Where Tit for Tat Doesn’t Add Up

Today I’m thinking about “Life isn’t a zero sum game.” What does that mean? Well a zero sum game, in game theory, is a game where someone winning also means someone loses. Nothing inherently wrong with that idea and the reality that there are winners and losers whenever there is competition. That’s just the thing life isn’t inherently a competition.

One of the first zero sum games I remember is marbles. In marbles often tradition insists that you “play for keeps”. Meaning the winner gets to take home all the marbles they capture. Their winnings are exactly the opponent’s losses. I hated it. Which probably means I was bad at marbles, and I’m sure I was. How could it be any different? If a bigger kid convinces you to play, they take you for all they can then leave you with fewer resources. Also the high stakes insistence makes practice risky, too.

Approaching life like a game of marbles, leaves us with only seeking to win or avoid loss. This approach leaves people keeping score in their lives. These points and winning often end up damaging our relationships because winning becomes more important than the other person.

When people approach life like a zero sum game everyone is an adversary, trying to get what’s yours while you try to get what’s theirs. There is no room for “ours”. Life becomes a power struggle on every level. That power struggle can be isolating and exhausting.

Shared Reality

If you read my writing or talk to me in person, eventually I will use the words shared reality. I don’t know when I adopted the concept into my understanding of the world but I did. Recently I had someone ask me to clarify what I mean when I say that.

I want to start by talking about individual reality. Because each of us has a unique path through life, we go through secret and mundane unmentionables all the time. Having experiences we don’t share with others gives us an individual perspective on the world. In America, where I live, we are taught as a society that you as an individual matter a whole lot, and while this is true it is just the surface layer of how people navigate the world together. There is also an underlying cultural thread that we are all equal. Together these, and I’m sure many more factors, focus our individual reality with a subtext that our reality is THE Reality.

Once I realized I was doing this, I started thinking of the Shared Reality. First as the places where my experiences overlay other’s experiences. They still aren’t going to match though. As I explored this concept I realized I projected my reality onto other people a lot.

I expanded my thinking and also thought of Shared Reality as the reality that exists outside of individuals. You can talk about this as what could be witnessed by an outsider. The things that exist outside of myself are in the Shared Reality also. If I were wiped from existence, everything that would still be here exists outside myself and is therefore part of another reality that I was sharing. When I disappeared it was still there. This is true for ideas and thoughts not just physical objects or happenings. If an idea or thought is true or represents a truth it will exist whether or not the thinker does, too. (it will also exist if the thinker disagrees.)

I contracted my thinking again, to try to think of practical applications of this concept. First I started observing more. I gave myself space to just let situations and relationships unfold with the life they have on their own. I realized I was limiting the world and my place in it by thinking my reality was the only one. This led to so many possibilities that I never would have thought about on my own. I started being less afraid, I was able to really start adjusting to the idea that Shared Reality might be much better than my individual reality is.

I also started shifting the things I felt responsible for from “everything I could observe or think of” to the things I had personally committed to, or am assigned by a role in life that I have. This one might need an example. If I would witness a stranger approaching a puddle. I would feel obligated to warn them about the puddle, no matter what I was doing, no matter what they were doing. (Imagine someone shouting out their car window at you, etc. “lookout puddle”) I would feel responsible to keep this stranger safe from stepping a little water. Like if I COULD prevent a moment of discomfort for anyone, it was the moral thing to do. Now I try to imagine the shared reality. One where I don’t exist at all. Most of the time in these imaginings, the other person is a capable human and avoids the water on their own. When they don’t, the worst that happens is they get their feet wet. Neither are any of my business.

Don’t get me wrong if I think someone will be hurt, I will say something if I can without making it worse. Meanwhile I have all this extra thought time for myself, living my individual reality, navigating the shared reality with all of you. 🙂

We Tried to Warn You About the Drop



We hid our depths.

You’d never guess it, probably.

We never stop talking, we never stop finding the beauty in the mundane

We are frivolous and shallow

this is the dervish layer

this is where we protect ourselves.

If you get caught up in the minutia

Won’t get to the bones

won’t go deep, that’s where we stay.

If you argue with us about the way we see the world rather than take a step to meet us closer to where we live, then that’s all you will ever see.

All you will ever know.

Even isolated, losing touch with the shared reality, we are deep.

We know without a doubt. Most people are too.

But there is no time, the depths take time, diving takes time and recovery/surfacing takes time and recalibration too.

You get the existential bends if you do it too fast.

You hurt yourself, traumatize yourself

this motion is more fundamental and sacred

it takes time. It cannot be rushed.

You must stop.

Stop completely and let yourself sink, let yourself fall.

Go deep.

And the murk comes and goes and you descend, deeper

deeper

and the light fades then disappears

and the pressure of loss of control and orientation builds until it collapses in on itself

yet this must be endured.

This is the process of depth.

It is SLOW it is uncomfortable

it expects a lot of you.

And when you go as far as your equilibrium wants.

You settle there, weightless

in the imaginary light that exists in darkness

and your soul can still feel proximity.

Still knows where it lives, still remembers now.

More as a concept down, in here, a belief, a feeling

rather than an experience or center of experience.

And when you are deep, the bones still exist.

They are the sturdy foundation of your personal reality

the places you are strong

solid and wear the ravages of time and communication

the pain of existing

the bones know it all.

Communing with the bones

reminds you who you are.

Why you came to be at all.

You are not who you were designed to be

you are a creature of your own creation in spite of the noise above to the contrary.

Your resistance, your scars at striving to become yourself

exist here in the bones of the deep

they tell YOUR story.

They do not give a flying fuck what any other reality would say.

They are the cold, clear objective existence of you.

Separate from anything else.

It is lonely with the bones.

They let you observe them with sightless dark eyes

synesthesia of the soul

They do not tell you their story,

they do not speak

it is their job to record and exist

not interpret, not speak

They do not observe, they are.

And with them you can remember who you are also.

And the pull will begin, to live the life of sight and shared reality

the pull of the now,

you cannot live forever in the deep.

It is not a home.

The buoyancy will change and the ascension will begin of it’s own accord

again there is no path but through.

It will be a different uncomfortable

it will be a different pressure

this time too loud and too bright

too fast too busy.

But the deep you carry with you will protect you

let you exist in the eye of your very own lifestorm.

That you can choose how and when to leave

How much of yourself you take with you.

And that power is something no one can even determine no less take away.

When all is lost, go deep.