Every day we all are playing mini-games like school, work, business, relationships, investments, dating, and many more- We all are trying to win in every area of life, but the key to winning in life is simply mastering one game instead of many.
A few weeks back I attended a birthday celebration of a 5-year-old. I have to admit, modern parenting puts a lot of pressure on the parents to make birthdays special for the child and enjoyable for the attendees. Nowadays, the parties are not limited to cakes, wafers, and samosas like in the 90s, they are filled with extravagant decor, lavish buffet menus, games to keep the people engaged, and moments perfect for video reels. Although it was just a birthday party, for me it turned out to be a great life lesson in disguise, when I chose to observe it differently.
Let me share, why.
All my life I liked winning (who doesn’t duh!). Put me in any competition, my inner critic would activate and put my mind, body, and energy into a process of winning. What mattered was the dopamine rush of receiving the reward, the feeling of victory over others, and most importantly respect and approval. It was the urge to feel superior to others. Winning means, you are the hero of the tribe. It meant you are the cleverest in the lot. Sometimes, it also affirmed that you are the lucky one. I may have not won all the games, but I definitely had this constant competitive nature to win in life.
This time in this birthday party games, I played differently, I played to lose. I intentionally chose to withdraw from the conditions of winning a competition. Playing to lose made me feel terrible. The feeling of non-participation, failing to beat the competition, and accepting loss made me feel insignificant in my world. This insignificant event flashed all my past competitions with family, friends, and co-workers. Always wanted to beat others in every game. The struggle and anxiety to win the rewards and upgraded the exterior but never the interior. How every loss and win developed and defined my state of being. One win we are up and one loss we are down, especially in the super competitive corporate world where beating the competitors is sometime our to-do-lists. The evening instead of being fun turned out to be upsetting. Because somewhere it made me feel the experience of being a failure in all my wins.
The point I am making here is that we all go through competition in our life, be it school, college, workplace, marriage, and even sometimes in our own family. As we are growing, we are guided to participate in competitions and put all our efforts into winning or coming first by beating others and if by any chance you fail or come last you have to listen to belittling comments from friends, teachers, and sometimes even the parents. Sadly this kind of thinking has made our living an ‘existence of struggle’ or ‘survival of the fittest’ or ‘belittling our failures’ instead of evolving us into a higher human — who believes in altruistic love, a love where we play the games to make another win, being happy for one and all. What happens when selfless love wins over self-interest love? The feeling of this kind of victory is unknown and uncelebrated in our culture. Developing competitions based on this positive philosophy must be encouraged so that the games become an opportunity to master and not win.
Playing the game of altruistic love may sound unachievable but anything that is valued and rare now in the world was once unachievable and unknown. For instance ‘Buddha’. Replicating brilliance doesn’t happen by winning all games but really choosing to lose all the games to master one game.
PS: I recently won 2 games (back to back) at a birthday party when I played the game of altruistic love.
