A Life Lesson from Scrabble

Often on a weeknight, especially during the winter months, my husband and I like to play Scrabble.  He always keeps score, and he usually wins (not that I am implying there is a connection there of course.)  The truth is, I never know whether to challenge him on the words he comes up with, which are pretty strange sometimes, because he likes to do crossword puzzles as well, and they have apparently expanded his word knowledge exponentially.

Anyway, I came across a Missioner’s Tale about a game of Scrabble some people were playing in Tanzania.  A missioner is a person who volunteers (or works) for the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.  They put out a nice little magazine to highlight what their missioners are doing.  (You should check it out)

One of their missioners, Gabe Hurrish, wrote about a visit he made to an African friend’s house (March/April 2018 edition of Maryknoll Magazine.)  When he went in, he heard quite a commotion going on by the friends who had gathered to play Scrabble.  When he asked them who was winning, the answer he got was quite unusual.

They didn’t know who was winning, because they didn’t keep track of individual scores.  

Here’s how he tells it:

“They explained that they were not interested in individual scores.  The whole idea was that the four of them would beat the total combined scores of previous games.  They were not playing for individual honors but for community gain.  What they wanted was to get the maximum points from the letters they had to the greatest extent possible.  They also explained that by playing this way, all of them benefited from learning new words in English, which was their third or fourth language.”

Isn’t that interesting?  These people who gathered for a game of Scrabble in Africa have, by intuitive reasoning, arrived at a teaching of the Catholic Church!

In The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church there is outlined the idea of the common good, which is what the Scrabble “team” was striving for.

The Compendium states:

“165. A society that wishes and intends to remain at the service of the human being at every level is a society that has the common good — the good of all people and of the whole person [347] — as its primary goal.”

To play together for the good of everyone is exactly what these friends were attempting to do.  Think about it.  Imagine if we truly operated this way as a society!  Sure, they didn’t play by the rules of the game, but they improved them!

God bless,
Janet Cassidy
janetcassidy.com

Gong deeper:

What does it mean to work for the common good? Does it mean that we lose our individualism?

How would it impact our happiness?  

Would we lose our freedom?

How would it shape how we relate to one another?

Here is a website that is an easy read that addresses some of these questions:

(It even has a good sports analogy for you sports’ lovers!!)

Or, you may like to go to the Church’s document itself.

If you want to continue digging and check out some other documents, I encourage you to go to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website