Why play board games?

Do you remember your childhood? when you were an infant, you couldn’t talk, walk or understand anything for that matter. But one thing you did effortlessly apart from eating and sleeping was to play and be joyful without any reason. You were inherently playful about every aspect of your life. You played with your food, your bed and many other things. You were alert and aware of your surroundings, although you didn’t understand a single thing about it. Those were the days you woke up smiling and went to bed with utmost relief.

What do you think?  looking back in retrospect, what was that one thing that made you so exuberant and joyful?

Play games to enjoy life

If you keenly observe your childhood, it was your nature to be playful every single moment that made you joyful, it thought you to explore anything and everything. You were curious, inquisitive, explorative, creative, and exuberant about every little thing.

A blade of grass, a bug on the floor, a bird, a dog, fruits and flowers and what not. You just got engaged with all the beauty and colors of life. Most importantly you liked you toys and teddy bears, those attractive and funny little things which captivated your attention all day long. Those bed time stories were so fantastic that you lost yourself in the endless wonderland of imagination.

But did you notice one thing, all these things made you and your mind grow and learn, but there was no use of sophisticated books, or courses to go through. It was out of your shear intelligence you grasped the realities of this world. Nobody lectured you, nobody made you sit through a course of lessons. You learned through mistakes, and using your intelligence.

The most essential activity you did was to be playful. All of your toys thought you many things than your big books of sophisticated knowledge that couldn’t even dare to come near a child. Your toys and games made you learn and grow more playfully than any other piece of knowledge.

As you got older, you were introduced to books and other form of information which didn’t make coherent sense to your mind. You had to learn the sounds, then the words, then their meanings, and then their context for every situation. It was a lengthy process for your mind. Language is good to serve the purpose of communication, but when it comes to learning and growing, it is not the only way to impart knowledge. Human mind can perceive and grasp things beyond words. We need to explore those possibilities with which we can enhance our way of growing and learning.

There are many ways in which one can impart knowledge, but our society has structured and is focused on only one way that is rot learning, or learning to using text. We have much stronger sense of vision than our verbal ability, also our hearing ability is much more connected to our imagination. Therefore, today we see our entertainment, and knowledge has heavily shifted to audio visual medium.

Most people are hooked to their mobile screens or a tv screens, as the audio visual stimuli are casting a charm on our minds with loads of information and data, most of it is biased and opinion oriented. There are very few sources of information of knowledge that can be grasped with clarity and transparency.

Fun and joy of gaming

Tabletop games and board games are a fabulous medium through which one can impart skills, knowledge, and improve one’s understanding of the world. The ability to grab attention, engage people in the gameplay, and a subtle way to transfer knowledge without compromising on the engagement of the people involved in the game.

We all have played chess and monopoly sometime or the other in our lives, we have learned to think strategically, tactically, analytically, diplomatically, and economically as well. These games taught us more about strategic thinking and economics that one can understand from a book. It is because these games were part of an activity that involved your intelligence and senses more effectively than other activities.

Tabletop games bring your friends and family members closer to your heart because the games offer us an unbiased platform to connect with our loved ones. Board games and card games also perform the role of a silent catalyst to churn the positive emotions to build the strong bonds of friendship and love. Most importantly, they give you an enriching experience to remember and to cherish about it in the future. Winning and losing doesn’t matter when you are with your friends and family. Isn’t it so?

Perhaps games are the best representation of the phenomenon of life and therefore they are so dear to our hearts. We just need to live our lives playfully to experience this life to the fullest and games have this potential to remind us to be playful every moment of our life.