Extracted from Playing Alone: Acting and Games

We can estimate but never predict the future. We never know what changes in the wind may occur once we throw the arrow of our actions. For this reason we never know exactly how our lives will be once we put our planning in action. The target, then, works only as inspiration, orientation and reference. To act is always a risk taking. When travelling to Israel I thought my experience there would be of hard and boring work, and it was, but many unexpected experiences came along and left their stamp in my memories which makes me forget about the boring and hard moments as irrelevant. My expectations may have caused me to appreciate the experiences much better, reason why positive expectations can be dangerous, making one not appreciate the positive aspects of experiences because of higher goals. Negative expectations can be even more dangerous, because we think we are happy for what we got since it is more than we expected, accepting what actually may still make us miserable, for believing to be in an advantage or privileged position, not willing to risk losing it with further action. Like when I talk about the health care in Germany not being public, not being universal and not being free but the contrary, it is private and very expensive - Different from what people abroad believe and say, and, also different from what a lot of Germans tell foreigners or themselves. When presented to such questioning the answer is often a comparison to others countries - specially comparison to American health care system, not because it is good but, the opposite, because any other system looks good comparing to America's - in order to point what they got as better than what they are comparing it to, and so to accept what they got as it is, as justification to not take the risk of action to change it, overlooking its own reality.

​We look for happiness and pleasures in life. Different from what many people think, happiness and pleasure are not sensed in a constant state of mind, body and life. It is found in the changes, in the overcoming of distress. They are the transitional state of mind. "It is action, not rest, that constitutes our pleasure" (John Adams). This is what games do for us, they present us distress to overcome and then to sense pleasure out of the challenging stress. The game, or the entertainment, is a safe spaces to risk action for not belonging and not affecting our real lives - unless we bring our real lives to it or it to our real lives - so it can be a distraction from the challenges of real life, as a way to accept what you got in real life for having somewhere else to risk action and whatever else to pursue pleasure.