04-20-2014, 12:00 AM
I've been in situations where I attempted to teach this lesson a few times to some different people lately. Recently, I was doing such with my 4 year old nephew. He had started to get caught by the concepts of winning and losing. While previously he had enjoyed games regardless of these concepts, he was then starting to only enjoy them when he was winning. So I told him a story which happens to be true.
Years ago, I started a game of fetch with a couple of dogs named Fynn and Max who had yet to play it with each other. They both loved the game, especially Fynn, and he was just beaming with joy as we played. It turned out that Max was a much faster dog than Fynn, and Fynn really had no chance to get the stick when I threw it. Eventually Fynn realized he could not win the game, and then he stopped playing. He no longer liked it and for the rest of the summer and everytime thereafter he refused to even attempt to play the game whenever we tried it. He seemed to have learned about winning and losing, and decided he would only have fun if he was winning. He forgot all about how much fun he had before he learned what winning and losing were and I never saw him have that much fun again.
My nephew's response to this was to start a new game with me where he pretended to be a dog and he would race against his stuffed animal dog Gomer to go fetch items I would throw. First he won every time and Gomer would get sad and stop playing and we'd have to remind him its about having fun, next he made Gomer win every time and I'd eventually have to remind my nephew it was about fun. Its adorable to watch how kids at that age absorb the lessons we teach them.
Anyway, you might be wondering why I'm taking time to tell you something you probably already know and have definitely heard before. First, because its a good reminder. I would say nearly everybody over the age of 12 gets off-track with this. They'll play a baseball game into 14 innings and then one team will break the tie and win so the losing team and their fans go and say "That game sucked" and mentally file it as such. Those people might "know" its about having fun, but their actions don't reflect having this knowledge. Of course, everyone has fun when they're winning. But what about when the game was still tied say during the 12th inning? Was my fictional person having fun then? Or at that moment did he have to wait to find out how the game would end before knowing if he was having fun at that moment or not? Unless the win or loss of a game, (whatever the game), is truly treated as a inconsequential fact with no more emotional import than the fact that bananas are yellow then those concepts still have some control over you; choose freedom instead.
The second reason I bring this up is because we can take this idea with winning and losing into more than just games. The ideal is for these concepts to have no power over us whatsoever. So that if we lose a house its as emotionally inconsequential as losing a penny; if we lose a leg or an arm it will mean nothing more emotionally than losing a checkers game. True, we'll do things differently as a result of these changes which are called losses, but does that mean we should cry and tell ourselves "I'm losing so I'm not having fun!"?
When winning and losing become emotionally meaningless to us, we lose interest in them. When we lose interest we stop checking on them. When we stop checking on them, we can lose other concepts like good and bad. Was it good that Jonny made that play in the 3rd inning? I don't know, does it lead to us winning or losing? If winning and losing doesn't matter, then there's no good or bad to the play that Jonny made. And if winning and losing doesn't matter outside of games either then there's no good and bad. As we lose these labels we can stop looking forward in time to see if we might win or into the past to see if we did win. As we lose interest in the we stop thinking about them. If we do this to all labels, all judgements, what happens? If we aren't going into the future or past where are we? If there's no judgements making noise in our heads what happens to the internal volume?
Years ago, I started a game of fetch with a couple of dogs named Fynn and Max who had yet to play it with each other. They both loved the game, especially Fynn, and he was just beaming with joy as we played. It turned out that Max was a much faster dog than Fynn, and Fynn really had no chance to get the stick when I threw it. Eventually Fynn realized he could not win the game, and then he stopped playing. He no longer liked it and for the rest of the summer and everytime thereafter he refused to even attempt to play the game whenever we tried it. He seemed to have learned about winning and losing, and decided he would only have fun if he was winning. He forgot all about how much fun he had before he learned what winning and losing were and I never saw him have that much fun again.
My nephew's response to this was to start a new game with me where he pretended to be a dog and he would race against his stuffed animal dog Gomer to go fetch items I would throw. First he won every time and Gomer would get sad and stop playing and we'd have to remind him its about having fun, next he made Gomer win every time and I'd eventually have to remind my nephew it was about fun. Its adorable to watch how kids at that age absorb the lessons we teach them.
Anyway, you might be wondering why I'm taking time to tell you something you probably already know and have definitely heard before. First, because its a good reminder. I would say nearly everybody over the age of 12 gets off-track with this. They'll play a baseball game into 14 innings and then one team will break the tie and win so the losing team and their fans go and say "That game sucked" and mentally file it as such. Those people might "know" its about having fun, but their actions don't reflect having this knowledge. Of course, everyone has fun when they're winning. But what about when the game was still tied say during the 12th inning? Was my fictional person having fun then? Or at that moment did he have to wait to find out how the game would end before knowing if he was having fun at that moment or not? Unless the win or loss of a game, (whatever the game), is truly treated as a inconsequential fact with no more emotional import than the fact that bananas are yellow then those concepts still have some control over you; choose freedom instead.
The second reason I bring this up is because we can take this idea with winning and losing into more than just games. The ideal is for these concepts to have no power over us whatsoever. So that if we lose a house its as emotionally inconsequential as losing a penny; if we lose a leg or an arm it will mean nothing more emotionally than losing a checkers game. True, we'll do things differently as a result of these changes which are called losses, but does that mean we should cry and tell ourselves "I'm losing so I'm not having fun!"?
When winning and losing become emotionally meaningless to us, we lose interest in them. When we lose interest we stop checking on them. When we stop checking on them, we can lose other concepts like good and bad. Was it good that Jonny made that play in the 3rd inning? I don't know, does it lead to us winning or losing? If winning and losing doesn't matter, then there's no good or bad to the play that Jonny made. And if winning and losing doesn't matter outside of games either then there's no good and bad. As we lose these labels we can stop looking forward in time to see if we might win or into the past to see if we did win. As we lose interest in the we stop thinking about them. If we do this to all labels, all judgements, what happens? If we aren't going into the future or past where are we? If there's no judgements making noise in our heads what happens to the internal volume?