Willie’s Joint, near downtown Buda, Texas, features a giant, oversized Jenga game. Players pull out the blocks that seem to be supporting nothing, one block at time, and put them at the top until the whole mess collapses. If you’re the one who causes the collapse, you lose.
Especially during holidays, life imitates Jenga. Hosting family and friends and juggling meal and schedules stack up. Extricating the time to add one more task puts us into Jenga-collapse territory.
We’ve changed our ways to some degree. We’ve pared down our Christmas gift-giving. Our miniaturized plastic Christmas tree sits atop a corner table. Whittle down, whittle down. We’ve gotten good at it, and not just at Christmas time. We don’t want Jenga-collapse. The few important blocks stay at the bottom.
Fewer blocks!
Streamline! Invite the neighbors over? No way!
Spend time watching that time-wasting event on TV? Heck, no!
Efficiency! NOW we’re getting rid of those non-essential blocks!
Finally! We’re down to eating, sleeping, and going to the toilet! We’ve got all that other annoying activity out of our lives! We’ve pared down to hardly any Jenga blocks at all! Victory!
We sit in the silent living room, staring at the interior-designer-approved grey walls. No neighbors to entertain. No jangling cell phones. No nothin’!
That’s when I start missing all the blocks we removed to get to this place. It dawns on me that Jenga did us in. All the activities and distractions that made our lives so much fun are now gone. All our time-wasting friends are gone. They’re precisely where we put them–at the top of the Jenga tower with all the other non-essential things, and out of reach.
Our Jenga base has been reduced to exactly one block wide.
With trepidation, I barely touch that one remaining Jenga base block so as not to destroy the fragile construction.
Then, with one violent motion, I yank it free.