Jenga was invented in the 70s, by a gentleman named Leslie Scott (but I feel it somehow originated in South America)
And the purpose of the game was to avoid being the the person that caused the Jenga tower to fall.
So everybody is trying to avoid the tower to fall.
But most people play it competitively, but this way of playing it, there are never winners, but there's always a loser. The last player to move it.
So me and my cousins, Pat and Jake, were playing Jenga this way. We did about three rounds of games when we started to get bored. Then something happened, we started to point out to the other, possible moves they could make. And started becoming fun. So after the tower fell again, we decide to start playing the game collaboratively, where we played as a team, instead of being competitors. This way, EVERYBODY had the same purpose, to make the most number of moves.
We realized that by playing this way, we can actually strategize every move we make, because a move now, will influence the way the tower leans later on on the game.
We started our initial game, with early strategy, where we would move the easiest pieces first. But this came to bite us later on because we took out strategic pieces that give the base stability.
Out of the the blue, a guy named Ryan, approached us, if he could play with us, he was a lone travel from Canada, looking to connect with other people.
We said of course, and proceeded to explain how we were playing this collaboratively, and he started playing immediately on the next move.
Mid game, things started to slow down. Each move was validated by every player, making sure that it was the best move possible, some of our moves took 15 minutes to make. Each piece that was moved, made the game harder to play, but as you progress, you start chearing and celebrating more.
At this point it's 11pm at night, we're at the hotel lobby and 2 families on their way to bed, passed by us, and Immediately I started explaining the differences of how we were playing the game, to this family that I never had talked before. They found it interesting enough to stay and watch a bit, even though they didn't fully understood.
But they started understanding how by we playing together, were influencing the tower and how the game progressed.
At this point we started getting into the end game, that's when it gets almost impossible to survive, and you probably won't go past 3 extra moves.
At this stage, because you don't have clear moves, you start making risky moves.
Jake did a move, by taking the piece fast, and hoping the tower wouldn't move. He did it, and everybody in the rooms goes, HOLLY SH€T!!
IT WAS INCREDIBLE.
We all cheered.
At this point we realized that it was game over, unless we could pull another fast move.
To be sure, we took pictures together with the tower still leaning, it was a beauty.
Then we all decided it was time, decided on the piece and Ryan had the honor of moving it.
He went for it, and the tower fell... Game over...
But after that we all cheered and felt we accomplished our mission, we banded as brothers and did our best.
This is the way all society should feel on all the group interactions we do throughout our lives.
At school with our families, friends, our peers, teachers with their students.
On college assignments, on the hospitals, on companies, within departments and individual teams.
We should feel like that with our significant others and the family we're building together.
If we play our lives the same way we played this game, we'll have colaboration instead of confrontation. We understood this, even though we knew, we were always destined to lose.
