Right around the start of week seven of winter quarter, when work started piling up and stresses began bubbling to the surface, I found myself privy to a movement that both shocked and inspired me. A large crew of residents in my dorm started to become dangerously addicted to Settlers of Catan…

It all started when my friend walked into the lounge saying, “Trying to settle?” Writing it off as one of the many weird things he says, I plugged back in my headphones and continued Facebook-stalking high school crushes instead of doing my work. I thought nothing of it. That question, like a giant drill coring to the center of the earth, pushed itself into the epicenter of my attention and left, in its trail, irreparable changes and damage.

Within days, “trying to settle” had overtaken our house’s vernacular. Leaving in the dust other popular household phrases such as “motherf*cking shoelace” and “in a word: amaze,” this simple question began to signify an alarming addiction. The residents were hooked on Settlers of Catan. People stopped working, stopped talking — all they wanted to do was settle.

I came back to the house late one night last week to see not one but two board game sets of Settlers of Catan strewn across the dining table and living room chairs. Attempting to chat with one particular settler, I soon gave up. In between each normal word, he would mumble something about “grain” or “wood pile” or “I’m not finishing my pset.” Like drug-addled stoners focused only on their next hits, my peers started becoming single-minded in their quest for their next fix of Catan.

Have you ever seen a zombie movie where, within six hours, one zombie has bitten all the others and now they’re biting everyone in sight? Like disease-ridden fruit flies emerging from the swamps after a wintry freeze, my peers unleashed their stingers as they ruthlessly set out to infect even the most studious among us.

Am I inspired by the passion of my settling peers? Absolutely. The zeal my friends have exhibited for a game that I understood to be targeted at 10th-graders is unsurpassed by any other passion I’ve seen displayed on our campus in recent weeks. Like athletes at the starting gun, or cheetahs poised for prey on the Sahara, my housemates have zeroed in on their goal of glorious conquest and sweet, sweet victory.

I don’t know much about this game, but I do know that one can only reach the finish line through a vital, magnetic, pulsing addiction to reaching enlightenment through grain, wood, commodities bargaining and lust for that which can never be bought or sold — a life of human flourishing.

Contact Lora Kelley at lkelley ‘at’ stanford.edu.