By: Selina Pedi-Smith, Pellere Foundation
What kind of games do you like to play?
Yesterday, I passed through the living room and found Don watching the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers play football…in Melbourne, Australia. Not Australian rules football. Not rugby. American football. Two NFL teams had traveled halfway around the world to play the league’s first regular-season game in Australia.
I spent nearly a decade living in Australia, long enough to become a citizen and learn that, in Melbourne, “footy” means Australian rules football. From where I stood, the sporting hierarchy put footy firmly at the top, followed by cricket, soccer, and all sorts of other things. I’m fairly certain lawn bowls attracted more interest than American football did 15 years ago.
So I wondered how the Aussies would take to a visiting American game. Apparently, they took to it just fine. More than 100,000 people filled the Melbourne Cricket Ground to watch the Rams and 49ers play.
Then again, we humans really do seem to love our games!
Some people follow football, baseball, or NASCAR with an enviable passion. Others settle in with a board game, disappear into a video game, or become mildly dangerous when someone brings out a deck of cards. Some solve crossword puzzles. Some spend hours fitting 1,000 nearly identical pieces of sky into a jigsaw puzzle. Some listen to true-crime podcasts, quietly racing the detectives toward the solution. We can even turn conversation, relationships, and human nature itself into a game.
All of these games are quite different, but it seems like they fill some basic need or urge in us. And… maybe we no longer need to wrestle like puppies or play-stalk like kittens to practice our saber-toothed-tiger-avoidance skills, but… for some reason we still delight in practicing reading patterns, anticipating what comes next, working with allies, and outmaneuvering opponents. On the game field or from the stands, in conference rooms, or in front of screens, we test our reflexes, memories, patience, and nerve.
I suppose a game gives us a little world whose rules can be learned, or even mastered if we so choose. There is a starting point, an objective, and usually some way to tell how we are doing. And, let’s be real – the rest of daily life tends to be much less considerate.
So, on a lovely morning in Melbourne, 100,021 people gathered to learn the rhythms of a visiting game. Here in Pennsylvania, Don watched them with the keen eye of a former football player. I passed through the room, watched for a moment, and made a joke – probably only funny to me – about the relative popularity of lawn bowling.
We all just seem to love to play, don’t we?
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