I had the satisfaction of playing Blokus with my family this holiday weekend. Well, it wasn’t really “satisfaction” since I lost every single round.
I was green, which you can tell by the amount of green tiles NOT on the board...
Blokus is a game where each player has a set number of blocks that they place on a board. Your pieces can only touch the corners of your other pieces, but they can be placed flush against opponents’ pieces. I don’t know how high your spacial reasoning intelligence is, but for my hamster wheel-driven brain this is a complicated game. Someone always puts a piece where I least expect it, and it fits like a glove.
I think families can be just like Blokus. I’m thinking as hard as I can about the move I’m going to make and then someone else puts a piece down that completely changes everything. We end up fitting together in sometimes-functional and sometimes-dysfunctional ways, but we always find a way to fit. At the end of the game we’ve developed some highly complex shape as the four colors converge in the center of the board.
Having family over last night I was astounded at the ways we fit. My funny bone was tickled, my buttons were pushed, I felt like I was at home (which makes sense because everyone was over at my house, but I meant it the other way, too).
CLE is doing a lot of work lately with family systems, and I’m seeing my own family in a new and exciting light. A family, or really any community, is like a balanced top. If a big change is made and the top starts wobbling then the system will react and adapt. As a therapist I’m used to talking about the not-so-fun “family fits” we might have. It’s also important to notice the great health and strength that we have as people in relationship. I was happy to tune into how my own family fits (like that play on words there?) last night rather than focusing on what bugs me about them – even though that blog post might be a bit more interesting…
As much as I’d like family to be more like Candyland, I guess I’m glad it’s not anything like Clue. Although sometimes it feels like Twister… Was that enough board game related puns for you?
