Life as a Game

Watch a small child at play. Observe the intensity with which they are immersed in the experience: they are fully present, discovering, learning something new.
Keep watching for a while, and you’ll notice their focus and interest have already shifted.
There’s no attachment to what they’re doing: they dive into pleasure, then let go, ready to immerse themselves in whatever next catches their attention.
They are still free from the illusion of owning, holding on, or making an object or experience “theirs.” They explore without identifying with a fixed role, slipping in and out of characters without limitation.

“Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

This well-known gospel quote could be translated as:
“Unless you stop identifying with the roles you play, you’ll remain tangled in the mesh of the game.”

Our need for identification, control, and security is perhaps the greatest obstacle to the evolution of the soul.
I know, in this physical life that feels so intense, sharp-edged, and often dramatic, we long for the comfort of roles and the places we occupy in the structure of the game to feel safe and grounded.
But when we take things too seriously, to the point of making ourselves sick; when we become stuck in our emotional reactions to life’s experiences, we begin to spin in circles, no longer moving forward.

That’s the well-known karmic loop, which severely slows down our expansion.

By giving power to roles and the objects that define them, we enter the spiral of accumulation and attachment, the urge to do in order to prove our worth, the importance of results to feel deserving of love and attention.

And that’s where we lose.

We lose ourselves, and the true purpose of our physical experience: to enjoy it, to learn from every single moment, to marvel at what’s new, to flow and express the unique talent we carry within.

“When we learn to stop identifying with the character, we will overcome fear and selfishness.” (Massimo Citro Della Riva)

We must learn to do things for the sheer joy of doing, without necessarily being interested in the outcome.

Just like children.

No attachment, no dependence, no expectations.
Because expectations are what create the greatest disappointments.
It’s never really the experience or the person that lets us down, we let ourselves down, because we had created an illusory expectation, and reality simply didn’t match it.
Our emotions belong entirely to us, and they’re aligned with the projection our mind has created, not with what actually happened.

If you can live without dependence and expectation, you’re in the famous “here and now” that all philosophers talk about: the only truly infinite and eternal moment in which you can savor life with the fullness of both your physical and subtle senses.
It’s not easy. I know.
But it becomes simpler when your awareness opens to the possibility that you are not just what your physical eyes see in the mirror.
And when your heart can be filled simply by contemplating or imagining something, without the need to do anything, then, in that suspended moment, you’re tapping into the true rules of the Game.

And so, perhaps, to truly live doesn’t mean to win the game, but to remember that you’re playing.

To laugh, fall, rise again, make mistakes, create, love, without the fear of losing.
Because nothing is ever truly lost when you are present, free, alive.
Every experience, even the simplest one, becomes a precious tile in this extraordinary mosaic we call life.

The child within you already knows this. It needs no explanation, no reassurance.
It only needs you to let it come back out to play.

(pic courtesy Unsplah - Fermin Rodriguez Penelas)