Set Out to Be Wrecked

I love the opening line of J. M. Barrie's The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island: “We set out to be wrecked."

I think about it every time I play the card game rummy 500.

During the game, players can choose to pick up a single card from the draw pile on their turn or pick up lots of cards from the discard if they're able to use the bottom card in a meld.

There are lots of advantages to picking up more cards. It increases the number of ways you can score points, and you get to immediately receive the points for the initial meld.

The downside is that you can become overleveraged and struggle to get rid of a bunch of cards that aren't useful. Every card you don't meld counts against your score at the end of the round. But despite the risk, I always pick up as many cards as I can.

In other words, I set out to be wrecked every time.

I don't play to win, I play to fail. Because when your potential upside involves absolutely demolishing your opponents every once in a while, losing most of the time is so much more entertaining.

When we embrace the possibility — or likelihood — of failure, life becomes much more fun.

See also: This Might Not Work