What My 7-Year-Old's Monopoly Obsession Taught Me About Life
Our daughter Remy has recently discovered a new fascination with the board game Monopoly.
Actually, fascination is an understatement. Obsession is more accurate.
The board has taken up residence on our dining room table constantly for the last few weeks.
Having loved Monopoly as a kid myself, I happily oblige any time she asks to play.
Revisiting this game as an adult, and as a parent - has afforded me a different take on the game compared to the one I held as a kid.
Some perspective that, with reflection, seems to translate well to life in many ways.
Nobody chooses the thimble..
Before the board is even unfolded, every time without hesitation - her hand is already on the cat token piece (a token that wasn't an option in the version that I had as a kid.)
I used to be exactly the same, but with the car. Every game, I’d choose the car.
On a recent game, I chose the penguin. Another time, the top hat.
And somewhere in those very unremarkable token choices - I pondered the changing nature of my habits from child to adult, intrigued with how easily i’d relaxed a former identity that I was previously so over-identified with.
It reminded me how malleable our identity can be over time.
What’s most fascinating is being able to see her iterate on her decision-making with each game she plays. She learns and adapts quickly, clearly noticeable from one game to the next - much quicker than I seem to in adult life domains.
In the way that only a seven-year-old can be expected to - she plays full out, with the absolute desire to win. With the classic 'zero-sum' mentality appropriate for her age: for her to win the game, her opponents must lose.
In her short-lived Monopoly craze she's experimented with many strategies:
There’s the utilities strategy - where she'd fight to obtain the Waterworks and Electric Company, convinced she'd found a winning formula based on her very first game that yielded some results with these.
The Mayfair phase - just the two, most expensive dark blues with hotels stacked high, and nothing else (which won her one game once - and bankrupted her in many others)
She's showing signs of awareness of others beyond herself. Games where she quietly passes on buying colour sets that her opponent has shown intentions of owning.
Then buying everything that others want, in order to have some trading ammunition later.
She’s running experiments, not knowing fully what she's doing - but learning in the process. All the while staying playful.
Well, mostly.
Wins are loud and joyful.
Some losses are gracious - a smile and a handshake, before rushing to set up the board again.
Other losses are exactly what you'd expect from someone who is seven years old, who got demolished in the 32 minutes before school started.
One morning I beat her badly... the school drop-off that followed did not go well!
The Perfect Strategy
As the true recovering perfectionist that I am - I dived deep into researching what the best monopoly strategy is… (to beat my 7-year-old daughter… sad, I know)
I now know everything about how Monopoly is supposed to be played in the most efficient and strategic way.
For example - The Orange properties are statistically the most efficient on the board. The cost per house relative to their return is optimal. The probability of landing on them, given the distance from jail, is higher than anywhere else on the board. Building quickly to three houses, without overextending to hotels too early, prevents other players being able to buy houses on their colour sets.
The Light Blue properties offer a similar advantage, albeit with lower returns.
I arrive at every game now, knowing the perfect strategy.
And then… the dice do what the dice do.
Some games I circle the board multiple times without landing on a single orange or blue, whilst Remy completes her first colour set in her first two laps.
My perfect strategy exists, but totally unavailable, as the game unfolds entirely differently to the one I'd prepared for.
One of my favourite Zen teachers Alan Watts, has a talk about music and dance that becomes something you can actually feel at a Monopoly board:
The point of a symphony isn't to rush to reach the final note as quickly as possible. The point of a dance isn't to get from one side of the room to the other as efficiently as possible.
The point of any game - might not be to execute a predetermined strategy to its optimal, perfect conclusion in order to win…
But simply to play.
To play the game in front of you, with the people you love.
I’ve come to realize that the games I often imagine playing, are never the games I end up actually playing.
And it’s much the same with the life I imagine.
Releasing control
So what else could I glean from the game of Monopoly that could translate to life?
Mainly lessons of control, or our lack thereof.
There's a starting amount of resources - and you didn't choose the amount you started with.
There are dice that nobody controls.
Windfalls and setbacks arrive without warning, from a shuffled deck that nobody stacked for or against you.
More of the game is outside your control than inside it.
Yet if we take it too seriously - with the desire to achieve an outcome, or to execute the perfect strategy we imagined, rather than the simple joy of playing - we agonise over every roll.
If we lose ourselves in the game, we start to measure our self worth in our assets, our cash balance and our status relative to others.
But if we consciously see the game as a game, then we have insight that Remy couldn’t access that morning.
We know that we aren’t our individual token. We aren’t our assets. Nor our bank balance, nor our position on the board.
Informed by the deaths of two family members recently, I’m reminded that eventually, every game ends.
The houses and hotels are wiped off the board. The paper money goes back in the box. Pieces back in the tray. The board folds and that game concludes. Everything returns to its source.
And then, the small voice from across the table - can we play again?
I'm unsure about what happens when this game of life ends.
Maybe the end of one game might not be the end of playing - similar to the views on reincarnation that Buddhists often hold. The cat token might be chosen again, by another hand, on another evening, in another game we can't yet imagine from inside this one.
But what I am pretty sure of - is that the most important thing in this game of life isn’t the token we play with, the money we made, or whether we won or lost.
It’s the people we played with.
And where the Monopoly analogy finally disintegrates - maybe the best games to play aren't zero-sum games - where one person must lose for another to win.
But positive-sum ones. The ones built on cooperation, and trades that are win-win for everyone at the table.
Played with a little more joy, and a little less seriousness.
Remy is just starting to figure these games out.
How are you playing yours?
Mick
What is your favourite token? Have you ever had a domestic fight break out over a game of Monopoly?
