Working Effectively With Black Sheep

(or any colour sheep for that matter)

One of the side-effects of a good old-fashioned pandemic is an increase in mentally escapist activities. Of this I am certain. So it is that, since March 2020, I have steadily improved my proficiency at a number of random-time-wasting games, available as apps on my cell phone or tablet, involving the obliteration of a variety of things like candies, bubbles, coloured balls, and various enemies that are trying to attack and conquer a certain friendly looking king. Many of these games for some reason give a person game-objects for designing rooms. I’m not too sure what that is all about, but I have also, during this pandemic, designed a number of spaces with the things I earn obliterating a variety of things (like candies, bubbles and coloured balls).

Perhaps there is a perception of productivity or creativity in the design of spaces … and as typically one earns enough game-objects for space designing by advancing in levels, if one falls for this perception of productivity, then one might be able to justify playing the random-time-wasting game for an inordinate amount of time … because by so playing, one gains enough game-objects to design another room, or a garden.

It seems the perception of usefulness or productivity is an attractive feature in a random-time-wasting game. I imagine this is to meet the human need to justify to ourselves how we spend our time as somehow being valuable … as if we are Really Important People who wouldn’t consider just randomly wasting time to be of value in and of itself. My nieces refer to this random-time-wasting as “egging” … as in “I’m egging about when I ought to be doing my chores or my assignment or sleeping” … ANYWAY … the egging article is a different article … back to the various assorted merits of justifying the playing of random-time-wasting games!

A feature of the games seems to be giving one the capacity to design rooms or spaces. We earn the tools to do those designs by advancing levels in the game. I think the games are designed with the feature of turning us into interior decorators and landscapers as a means of helping us to feel productive … a carrot if you will. The carrot they dangle is: if you play X more levels, you will earn enough Y to design another room or space.

This makes sense to me. Give me a purpose. Give me a reason to do something. And during the GOD-AWFUL pandemic purpose and reason were things I really needed!! Hence, justification in random-time-wasting games became valuable. (As a Lutheran, knowing I am justified by grace alone gives me great freedom to play random-time-wasting games without feeling vast scads of guilt).

One of my favourite carrots of inspiration in any life process is: what might this teach me? As I play these random time-wasting games, there is a small corner of my mind that, in a very squirrel-like manner, is constantly imagining what I might be learning from the process of playing random time-wasting games … constantly trying to find some useful justification, some useful skill that I might be gaining by playing what would otherwise be just a random-time-wasting game. I think of this small corner of my mind which regularly dialogues with the rest of my mind as squirrel-mind.

So in my current random-time-wasting game, in which, if I may just brag for a moment, I have advanced quite well, earning many paint rollers (earnable game-objects for room design) and designing quite a few rooms, I got to a level where black sheep appeared.

Now, I am not going to belabour all the possible notions of racial connotation in the black sheep. What I will say is, at first, I found these sheep just intensely annoying. I had figured out how to productively use all the other things that appeared in this game, and when the sheep showed up, I thought, this is good, I’m sure I can use these guys to advance quickly through some more levels, earn some more paint rollers and design some more rooms (for you see, life inherently requires some sense of purpose).

But the damn sheep just got in the way of all the other systems I had figured out for winning! They got in the way of my systems so well that, for about a good 10 days, I stopped playing this game (which has successfully been my companion and friend since about early December 2022, when life began to get rocky and I needed some random-time-wasting tool to help me cope). Every once in a while, often while on the throne, I would pull up the random-time-wasting game on my phone and try again with the damn sheep.

Ohhhh they would use up my turns, and all the rockets, explosives and game cash I had earned, make me miss my daily race win … all manner of wily frustrations. I hated those sheep for at least a week. For they confounded my progress.

One might argue that I was very much taking an I-YOU attitude with these sheep rather than a Martin Buber-esque I-THOU relationship with these sheep. I was not trying to befriend them. I was not approaching them with a calm non-anxious presence. Nope. I was simply getting annoyed that they would not help me get to the goal I personally wanted to achieve (because you see, having personal goals in random-time-wasting games is very important business. Ahem).

Squirrel-mind began to nag at me … like this:

“You know, if you would be a little bit more open-minded about these black sheep, I am fairly sure they serve a purpose”.

“If you would exercise just a modicum of patience, and give yourself some trial and error opportunities, and be willing to lose a few lives over this, I am sure you could figure out how to incorporate these sheep into the bigger world of your random-time-wasting game.”

“As with any obstacle in life, if you can find good use for these sheep, they will no longer be a bother, in fact, you may come to enjoy them.”

Did I mention that sometimes my squirrel-mind just makes me want to philosophically barf with its damn Zen-ish advice?

Enter stage left: digestive woes which caused more than my usual time spent on the throne.

This gave me more of an opportunity to examine possibilities with these sheep.

And as I opened myself to these possibilities I began to understand how these sheep work. There are many life lessons in understanding how these black sheep work, and learning how to effectively work with them.

The black sheep on their own simply move their eyeballs side to side in an annoying manner and blink. However, if you bring them alongside each other, a very productive explosion occurs, which helps one to reach the game goals.

If there is water to be spread, or flowers to be earned, or pearls to be dropped, the black sheep can play a valuable role when they are combined and create this explosion.

There is something very disciple-y and pentecostal-y about these black sheep. On their own they are basically useless, but in twos or more, they become something entirely more magical. And, their capacity to move me up through levels is becoming more and more apparent the more time I spend with them. Gathering these sheep together in pairs (at least) or groupings of more than two has become a new goal for me.

“So many life lessons here” says squirrel-brain. “Aren’t you glad you stuck it out?”

And although I hate a little bit agreeing with squirrel-brain, it is right.

First and foremost, black sheep are useless when on their own. They need to be in twos or more for the magic to happen.

When they are gathered in twos or more, all kinds of useful objectives may be obtained.

In order to gather them, we must first befriend them … be willing to work with them, and get over our own desire to stick with the known and familiar systems of our game.

In order to gather them and use them well, we must be willing to surrender some of the things that moths can eat and rust can destroy.

Squirrel-brain and I would recommend very highly that, whatever your random-time-wasting game of choice, whatever debacle you are facing in life, consider befriending your black sheep. They are fully worth every effort you put into it.