Intangible vs. Tangible
Image courtesy of Rubén Bagüés
“While you can’t necessarily quantify of the ROI of self-care, it contains an infinite value that can’t be measured.” - Srini Rao (link)
Reading (and finishing) the book Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse will change your perspective on life. If it doesn’t, wait a while. Give it a month, and try again. Hell, give it a year. It works, and there aren’t many books I can say that about.
How? Why? Its not easy to describe, because my interpretation of Finite and Infinite Games is that it describes the philosophy underpinning everything. Its not your common or garden how-to, it’s not a novel built to entertain, nor is it a biography of a great person meant to inspire. Instead, its a book that could be thrown into the “thought experiment” category, but in reality should come with a health warning. “Caveat emptor - May cause you to see the world differently, every single day.”
His thesis is that everything in life is a game. There are games that have a winner and a loser and therefore an end (finite), and games that you play in order to go on playing them (infinite). He argues that we need to become infinite game players.
I read it over a year ago, and it regularly springs back into my mind. A few weeks back, a friend and new father (like me) made an offhand comment, about raising children. He said that the downsides of raising children - the tiredness, the expense, the loss of time etc - are tangible elements. In most cases, you can label them and put a number to them. However, the upsides - the baby laughing, the calm breathing of a sleeping baby, watching them grow and develop in tiny ways - are totally intangible. Its not that they are “priceless”, but that they are eternally rich in meaning.
Amongst other things, having a son moved my emotional life from a finite to an infinite game. Getting a good solid laugh from him turns my day around, and not just in the gooey, doe-eyed “new father” sense. It helps me feel the underlying, unmeasurable goodness that I believe we all have. In those moments, its on hand to see up close, raw and as natural as can be. Its effects can’t be measured.
What else has a finite/infinite dichotomy? Self-help in many respects could fall into the finite category, while helping others lies firmly in the infinite. In my professional life, skills are becoming more and more “finite”, whereas the soft skills, those of being kind, giving feedback and being a gifted listener, are firmly in the infinite arena. Hard to develop, sometimes hard to deliver, hard to quantify, yet of infinite value.
“To infinity…and beyond” could turn out to be wisdom for the ages.
