TWO KINDS OF GAMES

   We humans play two kinds of games, and I've slowly started to see that I have set up countless stressful situations for myself by playing mostly one kind – and taking it far too seriously. This kind of game we might call “the finite game”. It’s the game of “getting ahead”, in which there are boundaries and rules and goals and time limits and winners and losers. I was accustomed at an early age to play this game and take it seriously, and I have continued to do so, and in the process have created for myself a life of fairly steady strain and disquiet. There’s another game, though, that intrigues me, and that has always brought more peace to my life than unrest, more contentment than trauma – and it’s a game I want to spend my senior years playing and perfecting.  It’s called “the infinite game”, and it’s based on the radical concept that all of life is actually spiritual, not material, and is therefore without limits, or infinite. In this game, there are no boundaries, goal lines, time limits, and definitely no losers. It’s a game in which hardihood and heroism are ever-present, and fear falls away like an insignificant bystander.  Certainly I won’t stop playing the first kind of game – the finite game – because it has it’s proper place in everyday life.  I will continue to set out my clothes in the morning, make daily to-do lists, keep a shipshape house, be cautious with expenses,, take cost-effective vacations, – but the key difference is that I won’t take the game too seriously. I’ll know that it’s an enjoyable but ultimately innocuous and inconsequential game. It’s neither crucial nor critical nor essential. The only that game that really matters is the one we always win – the infinite game of the universe that is always happening, always momentous, and always satisfying.