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Life is a game of Jenga
Apr. 24th, 2013 03:44 amSSRI withdrawal symptoms suck and I can't sleep and I'm in a chatty mood, so please forgive any rambling ...
I watched a BBC show on ABC2 a few nights back about kids whose parent had committed suicide, it was about helping them cope afterwards and there was some shots from a camp called Winston's Wish which supports bereved children. The Winston's Wish folks run a camp specifically for kids in the situation of having lost a parent to suicide - such an awful thing to have to live through.
One of the scenes showed an exercise that I thought was genius - they got all the kids to play Jenga. For those who don't know, Jenga is a game you play with a hundred or so rectangular wooden blocks. The blocks are shaped so if you put three side by side it makes an exact square, and by putting these squares on top of each other in alternating directions you can make an enormous tower of blocks which is quite robust. The game is that each player in turn removes a single block from the tower, repeating until eventually the tower collapses completely.
When the Jenga tower fell down the counsellors at Winston's Wish pointed to the last person who was attempting to remove a block and said "is it all their fault it fell down?" It obviously wasn't that specific person's fault - if you haven't played the game the tower tends to gradually get wobblier and more fragile for a surprisingly long time as you go on, before it finally falls down. So the last block removed is a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation. I've actually been in games where there was no "last block" because somebody touched the table and wobbled it, or even just a gust of wind took the tower down once it was sufficiently weakened by all the removed blocks. The counsellors explained that suicide is like that tower falling down - the thing that seems to have "caused" the suicide is like the very last block, it will never have just one cause.
It occurred to me that relationships, families, even our bodies are often like that - it seems like the last little thing (a fight, a virus, etc) makes everything collapse but in reality if the tower hadn't already been severely weakened and damaged that last little thing would NOT have caused any problems. It's (almost) never just one thing for breaking up families, for losing friends, for getting sick, etc. If somebody is saying it's all got a single cause, they're probably just ignoring all the other little inconvenient things that don't fit that narrative.
Interestingly, when I related this to my flatmate earlier she pointed out that we were discussing the same thing before I watched the show ... I had totally forgotten! And also I adore the Jenga analogy because it's so very clear if you've played the game. So I guess that's my lesson for this week: Causes of things are (almost) always more complex and multifaceted than they appear, especially if the answer seems very simple and neat!
Here endeth the lesson ;)
r
I watched a BBC show on ABC2 a few nights back about kids whose parent had committed suicide, it was about helping them cope afterwards and there was some shots from a camp called Winston's Wish which supports bereved children. The Winston's Wish folks run a camp specifically for kids in the situation of having lost a parent to suicide - such an awful thing to have to live through.
One of the scenes showed an exercise that I thought was genius - they got all the kids to play Jenga. For those who don't know, Jenga is a game you play with a hundred or so rectangular wooden blocks. The blocks are shaped so if you put three side by side it makes an exact square, and by putting these squares on top of each other in alternating directions you can make an enormous tower of blocks which is quite robust. The game is that each player in turn removes a single block from the tower, repeating until eventually the tower collapses completely.
When the Jenga tower fell down the counsellors at Winston's Wish pointed to the last person who was attempting to remove a block and said "is it all their fault it fell down?" It obviously wasn't that specific person's fault - if you haven't played the game the tower tends to gradually get wobblier and more fragile for a surprisingly long time as you go on, before it finally falls down. So the last block removed is a "straw that broke the camel's back" situation. I've actually been in games where there was no "last block" because somebody touched the table and wobbled it, or even just a gust of wind took the tower down once it was sufficiently weakened by all the removed blocks. The counsellors explained that suicide is like that tower falling down - the thing that seems to have "caused" the suicide is like the very last block, it will never have just one cause.
It occurred to me that relationships, families, even our bodies are often like that - it seems like the last little thing (a fight, a virus, etc) makes everything collapse but in reality if the tower hadn't already been severely weakened and damaged that last little thing would NOT have caused any problems. It's (almost) never just one thing for breaking up families, for losing friends, for getting sick, etc. If somebody is saying it's all got a single cause, they're probably just ignoring all the other little inconvenient things that don't fit that narrative.
Interestingly, when I related this to my flatmate earlier she pointed out that we were discussing the same thing before I watched the show ... I had totally forgotten! And also I adore the Jenga analogy because it's so very clear if you've played the game. So I guess that's my lesson for this week: Causes of things are (almost) always more complex and multifaceted than they appear, especially if the answer seems very simple and neat!
Here endeth the lesson ;)
r
