How I play the game

A response to February's Blackstack Salon prompt

I play the game by flipping the script, by reminding fellow participants of the permission they already have to be free. I expose the rules of the charade comedically, since they’re all made up anyway. I play the game at the behest of Kwaku Anansi, the divine trickster who weaves alternative webs of truth together for others like me to find new lanes…lanes other than the ones we’ve been given.

Better yet, I play the game to make new lanes, and to remind people that they too can create avenues of understanding that better reflect their divinely designed minds, and skillsets. I channel the Mad Scientist to weave new connections together in minds like new neural maps, lighting up regions of our collective consciousness that have been pulsing even when colonial concepts can’t capture it, or when they demonize this divine (im)pulse.

I play the game by not taking it at its word. The Comedian in me finds the absurdities first, then the Athlete bursts through the seams on GP just because they’re there; just to remind myself that this game is made up and can be played differently, in a satirical sense.

It’s all made up, which means we can recreate it. That’s why play is also called re-creation, and why re-membering ourselves as divine beings is so important. Because if I’m made in the image and likeness of the Creator, then am I not called to re-create?

I play the game because it is my divine birthright, and these visions I’ve been given about a better world aren’t here for nothing.

P.S. I penned that last line, about play being my divine…right as I looked up and saw 11:11

Asé