Let’s continue with how games reflect our lives in this second part of the post.

Have you played this name calling game where two teams stand on either side, and there’s a big blanket held in between. The MC will name a criteria and any member from each team who fulfills it will go forward. When the blanket is down, whoever shouts the name from the opposite side wins and the loser has to go over to the winner’s team. The team with the fewer members left is declared as the loser at the end of the game.

Obviously we played this yesterday. Amidst the many highlights in the game where we laughed our hearts off, some were the cause of me writing this post.

The other team (not the one I belonged to) had many strategies, which we conveniently call “cheating” to win our members over. They include shouting to scare us momentarily so they can shoot our names first, lying down so they won’t get seen first and giving off soft ”rumours” of the intended player going forward for that round.  

We were all in the game. So it’s a matter of wit as much as alertness and flexibility. When one method didn’t work, we applied others. The best thing of this game is this - you never know who will be the winner until the last roud, because players were swapped at every round!

In life, you will never be on top of the pack every moment. When you are below the peak, take that time to reflect on your past strategies, come up with new better ones to grab hold of that next wave and surge again. In the meanwhile, it never hurts to have some much needed rest.

Another highlight of the game was this: The blanket went down. Whoom! Steve (from the other side) yelled “Ronnie!” at a speed and rate faster than lightning could ever achieve.

While he was so in his moment, Ronnie sat there shaking his leg wondering “Can I do anything for you?”

You see the picture? Ronnie wasn’t the one we sent for that round! Happily sitting at a corner, hearing his name being wrongly shouted and gleefully witnessed one more member coming over. He’s none other than the dear Steve who made that oh-so-funny flub. 

Why did Steve do that? Because the criteria for that round was anyone with red colour, Not that many from our side, therefore he went there with a preconcieved notion that Ronnie must be the man behind the curtain. Unfortunately, his preconcieved notion led to his loss haha

By telling himself that it had got to be Ronnie, it must be Ronnie, he had conditioned his mind to accept that the man with a red shirt must be Ronnie! But alas, it wasn’t. So his eyes saw one man, while his mind believed in another and “saw” the other man.

We can laugh at this. But can we really laugh so heartily when you lost a million dollar deal just because you were blinded by your preconcieved ideas, thereby losing out the great number of possibilities?

Similarly, by preconditioning your mind that you can’t attract anyone, you won’t be able to attract anyone for you have blinded yourself to all the potential love interests zipping by. Conversely, by having a preset mentality that every one you meet is interesting, you will open your eyes and mind to discover those beautiful qualities in that person.  

Again, it’s all in the mind, isn’t it?

Just when I came up with the title for this post Life Is A Game, I suddenly realised the nice concidence with Steve’s (another Steve) post: Life - The Ultimate Game. What a serendipity haha. while mine goes into the specifc, his excellent post speaks of the macro game in life that we play. Must-read!

Finally,

A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it’s not open 

                                               ~ Frank Zappa.

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