- It doesn't require any energy use! Yes, there is some invested energy in the original manufacturing of the plastic boards and tiles themselves, as well as the transportation from wherever the game was manufactured to your living room, but after that, it's entirely off the grid. Compare that to so many of our other forms of entertainment these days: television, movies, video games, internet use, apps on smartphones and tablets. If you compare hours of playing Rummikub to hours of doing any of these other energy-intensive activities that require electricity, not to mention the energy and materials that originally went into making the device… well, I'm an English major, not a math major, but I'd be willing to bet that's a significantly lower carbon footprint.
- It's recyclable! I don't mean that you can put it in the recycling, although that probably is true as well-- it's just plastic tiles and a cardboard box. What I mean is that Rummikub does not wear out or become obsolete. There's never a point where you have to go buy a new one. The game will last for hours and years of play time, and never wear out-- or be less fun! You can pass it on to your children, and they to their children, and on down the line for generations longer than an iPhone or Xbox would last.
- It builds community! Rummikub is a game you play with other people. You can't play by yourself, which makes it different from television, movies, video games, the internet, and apps-- all things that can potentially include other people, but don't require them or their engagement. (Two people can watch a movie together and never interact.) Just like living sustainably, you have to have a community for Rummikub-- and Rummikub can help to build that community of people to be sustainable with. So many of our actions and activities today are individual and independent that when someone says "Communities are essential to sustainability," it's easy to say, "What community?" Many of us work or study alone. We drive alone. We shop for groceries and cook our meals alone. We even usually experience entertainment alone. And so we are disconnected, from each other and from the world we live in and help to create with our actions. Around here, if someone wants to play Rummikub, they go around the house asking everyone else if they want to play. The game is technically for only 4 people; we normally play with 5 or 6. Sometimes others will even come to watch, or someone will make a big communal bowl of popcorn or batch of cookies for everyone to share. We have access to all the other forms of entertainment-- we have a TV, we have internet, movies, and smartphones. But more than any of those, we want to play Rummikub. Because it brings us together.
- You can't win unless someone else is winning, too! As stated in number 3, you need other people to play Rummikub. But more than that, you need other people to start winning Rummikub. The way the game works, you place your tiles based on what's already on the board-- which includes both what you put down and what your opponents put down. Unless you're luckier than a lottery winner, there's no way to win without someone else putting some tiles down and thus taking a step towards winning themselves. Even though everyone is playing to win, they're playing together and riffing off each other. The better your opponents are and the more tiles they put down, the more chances you have to put down tiles in new combinations and win. This is entirely different from most of the other games we play, where even if you have an opponent, it doesn't matter if they're any good, because then it's just easier for you to win. This is also how great ideas are born. You may have a good idea, but when you see someone else's good idea, it sparks a chain reaction, where suddenly you can meld it with your good idea and it grows to become a great idea. This isn't possible without the contribution of both parties, even if they weren't initially working together. Then when the great idea is out in the open, someone else can take it and build on it to make it a solution. The kind of idea sharing we need to make good ideas great ideas, and then to make great ideas solutions, is the same kind of exchange that happens when you play Rummikub.
- It encourages you to see patterns and think creatively! Rummikub is all about patterns and seeing the ways that the pieces are connected and can be recombined to create something new. While here at CELL, we've talked a lot about Systems Thinking, or the way that systems work together, which requires that you're able to see the patterns behind how things work. It's not just one simple pattern, either; it's a whole web of complex, interlocking patterns and systems that you have to hold in your head at once. The same is true of Rummikub. If you want to win, you have to be able to see, hold, and rearrange a tangled array of interconnected patterns in your head all at once. If we want to be able to understand our world and create sustainable solutions to the problems we face, we have to see beyond the first appearance, to the patterns and systems that make it work. We have to be able to creatively problem solve, another skill that Rummikub builds. So many of our games now are more about speed and reaction time than puzzling out an answer, which is why when we're faced with a real world problem that requires us to think and analyze rather than hit a target as fast as possible, we feel lost. Rummikub is fun, but more than that, it activates and exercises part of our brain that will be essential for creating solutions.
- Regardless of who wins, everyone is happy in the end! Okay, this may just be my experience playing. It is entirely possible that in other, more competitive circles, there may be bitterness at the end over who won. But as far as I can tell, the simple act of getting people together to play a game that's fun and makes them think, while maybe sharing some friendly banter or even snacks, is enough to make everyone happy, winner or not. Which is a good feeling to practice, because the thing about living sustainably (or even living period) is that there's no end point where you've either won or lost. When you practice sustainability, you'll never reach a point where you can say, "Woohoo, I did it! I'm sustainable now! Game over!" We all have to learn to be happy with just being part of the process, and putting as much effort and heart into it as we could, while enjoying the company of our fellow players.
As the only English major in our
little group of nine, I have a (justly earned) reputation for being able to
create an unnecessary metaphor out of just about anything. It's what I do. So
when two of the girls (who shall remain unidentified, but whose names may have
rhymed with Maiya and Kargo) challenged me to write this blog post, which was
assigned to be about some sustainable practice we could all integrate into our
own lives, about Rummikub, I accepted.
Rummikub (or
Rummycube), for those of you not familiar with it or the similar card game
Rummy, a game played with tiles of the numbers 1 through 13 in four different
colored sets. You begin the game with 14 random tiles, and, though I won't get
into the specific rules here, the object of the game is to get rid of all of
your tiles by placing them in patterns (like all one number in different
colors, or a succession of increasing numbers of the same color) on the board.
And I'm here to tell you, in all seriousness, that if you want to be more
sustainable, playing Rummikub might be a good way to start.
Six Ways that playing Rummikub is practicing
sustainability:
(Disclaimer: for
the other English majors out there, no, this is not actually a metaphor. I
decided not to create an elaborate metaphor because it would have required
that everyone reading this understands all the rules of Rummikub, which seemed
unnecessary because the following works better anyway.)
-Jessica
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