Games

Do you ever really stop to think about how dumb the rules are to most games?  Let's take football (I swear, totally random choice!).  So, as far as I can see at the simplest level, the rules of football are:

Run while holding an inflated piece of leather across a white line.  If you do this, you will score points.  Yay points!  Good stuff.  If running doesn't seem like a good idea, you can throw the piece of inflated leather from one person to another to try to score the points.  Or try to kick the piece of leather through two metal posts to score points.  But beware, big tough guys will try to stop you and your crew from scoring points.  

"Okay", you say.  "That seems pretty good.  Good game." 

Consider baseball, then:

Try to hit a round piece of rubber and leather that's coming at your at high velocity with a wooden stick.  Then, if you hit it and no other player catches it with a big piece of leather wrapped around his hand, you run around trying to touch three square pieces of cloth placed on the ground before touching a final piece of cloth to earn "runs". 

Staring to sound a little random?

And then, there's golf:

Try to hit small white balls with L-shaped pieces of metal, trying to get the round pieces into tiny shallow holes hundreds of yards away with the fewest possible hits or "strokes".

Who came up with this stuff?!?  When you really stop to think about it, the rules and regulations that make up our games and sports on the surface level appear quite arbitrary and random.  However, these games work.  We love them, don't we?  We know the rules, everyone agrees upon them and gosh darn it, they are fun.  Fun to play, and fun to watch others play.  

I wonder, what's behind those crazy sounding rules?  How did they come up with them anyway - it really actually took some planning and intelligence and intention.  Here's something else I know: games are not fun when you a) don't know the rules or b) the rules keep changing.  

The events of my day caused me to ponder why I react to perceived stress in predicable ways.  We all do it.  It's like things around us are constantly changing and we don't know the rules...that makes us really uncomfortable.  But then, what if we had it all kind of turned around.  What if we were focused on the wrong stuff and missing out on the fun of the game?What would happen if I lightened up and saw life more like a game?  Not in the sense that it's all a game so nothing matters, but more in the sense that it's all good.  In the sense that joy is the juicy good stuff.  Don't you want the good stuff?  I do.  So why be content with mediocrity and only feeling joy some of the time?  Why not question your limits and bust loose from the games we play with ourselves into the freedom to play the game of life without limits?

What's stopping you?

Wanna know what's stopping me? Stay tuned.