Playing The Game

“It’s not whether you win or lose. It’s how you play the game.”

When I speak about “the game,” I’m speaking of the daily give and take with existence and the way in which we decide to engage and respond to it all.

As adolescents, children learn a lot of social rules and hierarchies through play; the act of practicing freely without judgment. You play to test the limits of yourself (physically and mentally) and the world around you. In the same way you teach a puppy to understand not to bite hard when it plays is the same reason you teach a child not to throw rocks on the playground. You have to maintain a level of order to participate with others. If you are too rough or mean, you risk isolation. If you’re too polite and accommodating, you risk being taken advantage of. It is the understanding that you are only a participant of life and not the center of it. That everyone is living out their own game playing through the tides of every ripple, action and reaction.

What is truly fascinating is that the art of play is a continual practice of learning how to play with the best players not the winners of any one given game, but among a series of games. When you’re young, the games are much simpler, more direct to the point with basics rules in order to win. As we mature and become more complex, the rules on the playground become the fundamentals at the workplace, in your relationships, within your friend groups.

Playing to win is everyones game. Whether you admit to being competitive or not, you want the best for yourself right?. We’re all felt a different set of circumstances, but it’s whether or not we are willing to do whatever it takes to have the best chances for ourselves.

We play to maintain order, advance status, nurture others, etc. The universal rules of fair play include the ability to regulate emotion and motivation while cooperating and competing in pursuit of the goal during the game, as well as the ability and will to establish reciprocally beneficial interactions across time and situation. Games undertaken voluntarily will outcompete games imposed and played under threat of force, given that some of the energy that could be expended on the game itself, whatever its nature, has to be wasted on enforcement.

How should you play, to be that most desirable of players? What structure must take form within you so that such play is possible?

-Busy Brain