Games are a tool to help us understand reality more deeply.

Some games have a mechanic called the Time Loop. Examples include Outer Wilds and Minit. The game resets after a fixed amount of realtime, and the player finds themself back at the beginning, with everything in the gameworld back to how it was. The only difference is that they now have more experience of what can happen in the game. The game progresses through exploration and experimentation, with the player's mistakes erased every time. More and more of the game becomes accessible because of the player's increasing knowledge. Sometimes the player goes down a dead end for a while, and nothing new is found. That's okay. The loop carries them.

In the real world, among those creatures which learn, each living being arrives with a pretty limited built-in understanding of the world. Most of our knowledge comes through experience.

There are candy wrappers littering the coffee table, empty beer cans lined up along the tv stand. I laugh, a deep, loud laugh from my belly as my best friend presents the most absurd situations he’s encountered this week to me as if we are in show and tell.

I took a quiz that told me I’m a Samantha, he’s a Miranda; neither of us has watched much of the show. I cackle as we watch snapchats from my husband and he offers up another peanut butter

So I'm at the harbor, right, and as I'm walking along the main drag I see this shop called "Wizards Of The Coast".

And I'm like, hot dang, I bet I can get good stuff in here! So I waltz in, the bell above the door goes dingy dingy ding -- and I'm looking at this whole place, and it's filled with cards. Packs of cards, stacks of cards, displays of cards, nothing but cards.

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