Kong

August 22nd, 2008Blog0 comments

Donkey Kong. Its objective is clear to any human being that sees it: Propel your mustache-faced man up the ladders to save the lady. An ape will throw barrels at you in an attempt to foil you. It is encoded in our DNA that apes are dangerous creatures, especially when armed with barrels.

King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters — I finally got down to watching this. It had been sitting on my desk for a long time. The time was right, so I popped it in.

Holy cow. You must see this — you would love it. The people in it are such characters — only the real world could produce such interesting, tragic, and hilarious people.

A couple of things about this documentary stuck out to me. The first is how a person will hold on to the defining core of their identity with such ferocity that it makes them sour, blind, and completely insulated from reality. And that’s not a good place for a human being to be.

In the documentary the reigning Donkey Kong champion refuses to play an up-and-comer head to head, face to face. He refuses to even meet with him.

This was a hard lesson for me to learn but also probably one of the most important ones: When other people are successful, it is essential to meet them. Get to know their work, get to know who they are as people. Discover why they are successful.

Granted, what I do isn’t a zero-sum game like becoming the World Champion of Donkey Kong. In that game, there can only be one. But in whatever worlds you travel through, you should always know who’s there with you. You should see what they’re doing and what’s working.

And above all, you should be friends. Because that eliminates the harshness of bad feelings. It allows people to locate each others’ humanity, see what they have in common. Together, everyone excels.

Don’t be the sour dude in the corner, skulking and plotting revenge. It’s not good for your health.

Also the documentary contains this man: Mr. Awesome.

And he is real. Oh, so very real.