Lost in your own game ?

I guess there are many people who could tell the stories how their childhood defined their lives. For good or better. Sometimes (and definitely unfortunately) for worse. Sigmund Freud would now contently nod with his head, as if he would non-verbally repeat himself:

‘Told ya… it all comes to your childhood. This is when your personality is formed.’

Perhaps he was right.

For as long as I can recall my early school era, I could remember indicators of double set of criteria that I had to deal with. No hard feelings, my primary school teacher. Definitely not now, more than three decades later.

It seems that I always had to do a bit more than others. Put some additional effort to get that A. Slightly more to get that A+. I guess I was that type of a student that many wished would fail (Maybe because of the family background? Political situation in the country? Just because someone felt like that? Not sure even they would know to define their reason now). But somehow I always managed to bounce back and succeed. Added extra efforts. Went the extra miles. Usual things you do in these situations if you are as half as persistent as I am.

At that time it seemed like a curse. It seems like a cliché to have it written here but only after a decent period of time passes by, you are able connect your dots and realize it. It was the best thing that could happen in this early, personality-forming years of my life. So thank you, my primary school teacher.

Taught to be evaluated by different criteria, you get accustomed to play by different rules. You realize that you are not competing against your classmates. It is not about being better than them. Beating their score on the math test or getting your grammar better than theirs.

It was all about reaching the bar that, for some reason, happened to be set a bit higher for me than for the others. I got used to it and thrived thank to it.

According to Csikszentmihalyi, it allowed me to get into the zone, to experience the flow.

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times . . . The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

And this is, my friend, how you become a learning-junkie or a curious cat. Or both.

You get trapped into the habit of expecting more from yourself. You get involved into competition against yourself. Today better than yesterday but not as good as tomorrow becomes your motto.

Seems flawless. But anyone who has experienced it knows that it’s not. When you compete against yourself, you are less interesting for the others. You are less likely to serve as the easy lift for their ego-boosting exercises. You are simply not able to comply with their truths while you are living your own truth. Sometimes you will are a weirdo or just feel misunderstood.

Sometimes you get tired of explaining yourself. Rarely to the others, most of the time to yourself. You are an awful sparring partner for random small talks. After all – why debate about the weather when there’s nothing you can do about it?

Truth to be told sometimes you end up feeling lost in your own game. Occasionally wondering what the hell is wrong with you. Why couldn’t you be just normal? Like others.

Then sometime back at the beginning of 2019 you hear Simon Sinek speaking about the concept of finite and infinite games. Your omnipresent curiosity does its work and you reach for the book he is making his references to.

Seven chapters and hundred and one numbered sections later you realize that of James P. Carse’s ‘Finite and Infinite Games – A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility’ represents a perfect summary of a life philosophy that you practice for nearly four decades of your life. And serves as as an ideal explanation for all of your to-date life struggles.

‘ There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.’

Throughout our live we are all the players. Some of the games we play are finite. Life seems to be one of them (judging by my own to-date experiences and cognition, which some may rightfully doubt could be used as a solid reference point). Sometimes we play infinite games. Like when we want to learn and explore. When we are not taking pronounced boundaries for granted but wonder what is on the other side and seek how could we move them further.

‘No one can play a game alone. One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We don’t relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others.’

All of our life collisions happen when we mess up the games and start to play one of them by applying to it the rules of another. When we aim to win the games that are not intended to be won. When we wander into games defined and played by others. Wrongly assuming that their scenarios hold for games that we are playing.

Just another very human thing we do.

But it’s ok not to evaluate yourself relative to your classmates or colleagues. It’s totally ok not to be bothered if you are the smartest in the room and just want to learn for the sake of learning. It’s definitely ok to have your bar set high just to advance yourself without any desire to beat anyone else.

And it has a name. It’s called an infinite mindset.