One afternoon last week I convinced my friend to follow me at a restaurant in Brooklyn to learn to play Mahjong in Hongkong style. I have always been intrigued by the colorful bakelite tiles of mahjonga, a satisfactory sound they make while mixing. My mother plays the American version twice a week with the same groups of friends, a club ritual that makes me a little jealousy: Why don’t I have a regular game of something?
We were a group of 15 students, all new in the game. For starters, we played a doll with all the tiles that overturned so that everyone could see their values and the teacher could take us through every step of the game: here’s how you set up a table, building a tile wall. Cubes cubes to see which player can break the wall. These are the tile suit, these are venerable tiles, dragons, winds.
Mahjong is not a cinch to learn. Our teacher was great, repeating every step of the rules several times, asking us to repeat them. There were also cards of cards I knew, but I found confusing: wait, you need three identical tiles to form a pung? How did that guy just win the game when I still worked how flower tiles work?
And then: Why do I learn to play this game when I already know many other games and never play them? It was the thought that she seduced me, which made me want to politely ask for emergencies and go out in the middle of the lesson: Why do I do this? I am supposed to be a curious person, the one who has attracted herself with new experiences, who wants to expand her horizons to multiply the possibilities for fun. Mahjong offers all these things! But learning a new game is something I haven’t worked in years. This is something children (and their parents) do easy, but in the end, most of us stop. The learning machine of new things becomes creaking. It’s not easy or comfortable to restart that old mainframe. So many things in life is not easy or comfortable already! Why apply for another? And do I even have rooms in my brain, in my calendar, for another The thing I do??
A friend who brought with me in Mahjong surprised me a few days later, when I assumed that we were both decided to redirect our lesson enough, but none of us had energy or appetite or brain plasticity to ever play again. “I got us a mahjong set,” she announced. “Now we just need two more people and we can play.” I thought of our lesson, as I wanted to leave because I didn’t master Mahjong quickly enough. Being bad in something that feels bad. Being new is often uncomfortable and uncomfortable. Of course we do the things that we are good at. We like to be safe and comfortable and look cool.
But there was a call to the community. The invitation to be bad in something with other people, with the aim of coming to the other side: a new hobby, a new ritual, maybe, in the end, the club that I peeked at my mom’s games.
A few weeks ago I wrote about this time of year I consider one of unbuttonedThe release of this winding, denying winter itself and the opening of spring, which officially arrived last Thursday at the northern hemisphere. Umazing, now I mean, sometimes it can be challenging. The deliberate transition from the famous place to the unknown is not without discomfort. Recently, I read that when the chicken was ready to hatch, it develops the tooth of the eggs, a sharp small structure on the beak it uses to get out of the egg. How amazing! How to grow your own egg teeth, generate your own tools to shoot your own shells, escape from our too much all -up housing and appear in light?
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