I have spent most of my life playing other people’s games. 33 was the year I decided to question it.
The business game. The war game. The school game. Looking back, I can see the same pattern over and over. They all had their stated purpose, and yet each one was actually about something entirely different.
In the years since, one thing I have learned from this is how to take responsibility. The games I was playing weren’t ones I had consciously chosen. They were just the ones I had signed up for, and since I was playing, I decided I might as well win. But no matter how much I won, it never felt like much. A brief rush of excitement. A moment of satisfaction. A fleeting instant of relief, maybe even peace. But just as quickly, the nagging sense of things undone, of more work to do, of some shortcoming to address.
One irony in all this is if you had asked me at the time, I would have told you I was in control, charting my own course, doing things differently, etc. As Feynman said, “you are the easiest person to fool.”
Another irony was how much exposure I had to people who seemed to be winning, or to have won, but still gave off this fearful, brittle, trapped stench, and that somehow I failed to recognize. Sometimes I am a slow learner.
But then came thirty-three. An apocalypse of sorts. I struck through the mask, and what I found was simultaneously much less and far greater than I had ever imagined.
Another thing I have learned from this: When you are playing someone else’s game, you can’t win. Competition is limiting. And when you get the prize on offer, it is never worth the price.
On the other hand, when you are playing your own game, you can’t help but succeed, as concepts like winning and losing dissolve in favor of co-creation, collaboration, and invention beyond what ever seemed possible.