As a friend of mine once said on trivia night, “The stuff they’re asking about is just meaningless bull.” And the team laughed and thanked him for defining, well, trivia. But while the content of the questions may be meaningless, I’ve found trivia has given me a perspective that applies to other aspects of my life. Not bad, for a few hours trying to recall state capitals that have the same initials as celebrities that aren’t named but only hinted at. Or naming a country by its flag. Or debating what colony became a state in 1788. It’s a sore spot. Really sore.
Some of these lessons are actually quite useful, like the one my friend stumbled into. Because he was right. It WAS meaningless. Outside of the rather low stakes of trivia night, it’s not likely I’m ever going to get rewarded for knowing that New York, being one of the original 13 colonies, could not in fact be considered a colony in 1788 when it adopted the Constitution, because it had been a state under the Articles of Confederation and recognized as independent from Britain since 1782. No, I’m not bitter or anything. But despite being a debate we rehash when the alcohol is flowing, we know it is trivial. It really doesn’t matter.
And there is lesson number one – know what’s trivial. As worked up as we get over trivia night, and as fun as the war stories are to tell, in the end it doesn’t matter if we win or lose. Heck, it doesn’t even matter if we show up. Yet that’s a lesson that’s hard to remember with life’s constant barrage on my attention. No matter how important or urgent they seem, some things just don’t matter. So what if my hair color fades because I couldn’t arrange an appointment this month? Doesn’t matter. So what if I missed seeing the latest Marvel movie in the theater? Doesn’t matter. So what if I didn’t go in to work over the weekend to finish that TPS report? It’d be easy to think that mattered, but it totally doesn’t.
And since it doesn’t matter, our trivia team takes risks. BIG ones. Don’t know the answer? We put something, even if we know it’s wrong. Time to bet on the final question? Bet it all. And there’s lesson number two – if it doesn’t matter, go ahead and take the risk. We’ve won more than once because we bet the farm on a category we knew nothing about. Why is it important to take these little risks?
Because it teaches me how. If I’m not willing to take a risk when there’s literally no risk at all because it’s trivial, then how am I going to have the courage to take a risk when it matters? While we pretty much always bet the farm on the final question, we still do the math. And exactly one time, the risk wasn’t to our advantage, because it was a mathematical certainty we would win as long as we didn’t risk any points. I’ve found that I’ve become much better at recognizing risks worth taking when it does matter, because I practice assessing risk when the outcome is trivial.
And last, over the years, my trivia team has had several EPIC disagreements with how trivia questions were worded. The New York – Colony or State in 1788 debate is one of the hills we will die on. We had Very Good Reasons why that question was terribly misleading. New York was not a colony in 1788. Oh, we argued. The life lesson here is, never argue with the trivia DJ. Despite us having a much better grasp of the historical nuances, the DJ didn’t write the questions and wouldn’t change our score. Yes, we lost.
But it’s trivia, remember? Losing, ultimately, didn’t matter. Sometimes in life, I’m going to lose. It’s better to lose some silly game than something that really matters. So I learn not to fight the losing battles. Instead, I just rehash them over drinks with my friends. At trivia.
Ericka Kahler 