Best Decision: Starting Mahjong

Tied to my mahjong origin story, my decision to play Japanese mahjong has been the best decision on my life - so far.  As a person, I developed myself within the game and the people whom I had met.  As people, we all have our medium to grow ourselves.  I happened to do within this game.

So, how did I grow in this game?

• Repetition
• Acceptance
• Learning
• Community

Repetition

With each and every hanchan, we happen to play the same game each and every time.  We play with the same tiles and the same rules - for the most part.  Again and again, we start a game; play through it; and finish it.

With each and every hanchan, we are faced with situations based on the tiles themselves.  We have our hands, and we face our opponent hands.  From there, we're dependent on our tile draws, and the tiles in the dead wall.  As a hand plays, we make our choices on which tile to keep and discard.  Most of these, they are common decisions with not much thinking required.  Here and there, we must take a little extra time to deliberate our tile choices.

On a daily basis, we are faced with situations, that require decisions.  We must choose - whether we like it or not.  At times, we can abstain from a choice; but even that is a choice upon itself.

Acceptance

With every result, we must accept them.  Negotion is not a rule in this game.  We cannot bargain.  The result of a hand and the result of a hanchan, we must accept them as they are.  The results of this game can be rather harsh from both the winning and losing perspective.  The more we play this game, the larger our mahjong PTSD mental library grows.  Plenty of painful games end up in our memory, hoping that we learn our lessons from them.

Learning

I personally learned this game from almost nothing.  Tied to my origin story, I picked up the game from watching both the Saki and Akagi anime.  Then eventually, I was shown a way to play this game.  From there, I figured out the basics and kept learning one game at a time.  Eventually, I managed to learn enough about the game to help write out a wiki.

Nevertheless, the learning in this game never ends.  One can claim to be the best mahjong player in the world, but the mysteries of this game continue to baffle us.  The sheer randomness make many aspects of this game to be rather unpredictable.  Given the combinations and permutations, every game we play ends up being different from another.  The probabilities are ridiculously low for any hanchan to be played exactly identically from another.

Community

Not unique to this game, riichi mahjong has a community with subcommunities within them.  The community of mahjong players include everyone who plays any form of mahjong.  From there, we subdivide to the different styles of mahjong.  In our case, we branch off into Japanese mahjong.  For me, this is my primary style of choice.  I have indulged in other styles here and there; but I do not play those on a regular basis.

Within Japanese mahjong, we can subdivide even further by sheer geography.  This starts with nation.  I live in the United States.  Since my own beginnings, Japanese mahjong is played in many countries across the world.  Now, within each of our countries, we can boil down to our mahjong clubs and/or personal circles.

Of course, this sense of community exists with any activity.  At the same time, we speak from our own circles and experience with regards to this game.  From this game, we have specific game experiences as reference.  Through this, we have commonalities from the game itself to relate to.  Any mention of these references, we know what we are each talking about.  Assuming no cross reference, we may not understand references from another activity, unless we happen to take part in those activities too.  After all, we cannot limit ourselves to just one activity, right?

Naturally, we seek additional people and even membership within our respective groups.  Some activities can be enjoyed on a solo basis.  However, mahjong makes that task very difficult, as we need other people in order to play.  That is true, even if we enjoy the game by ourselves via online clients.

Overall

In general, I became who I am through mahjong.  My personality developed here.  Just for that, I like who I am.