Playing The Game

Zorro at the end of a long day

I was watching the end of the movie "The Legend of Bagger Vance" this morning and one of the characters asked the question, "Why do we continue to play a game that we can't win?  All we can do is to continue to play and do the best we can."  Of course I am paraphrasing the movie but that is the just of what was said.  It hit me as a "lightbulb moment" to use an Oprah term.  Now I am no big sports fan and although my kids played at it somewhat when they were in school, I have a whole stack of abandoned sports equipment to prove that they weren't really big on it either.  So the fact that a sports analogy even caught my attention is one of those times that I think the Universe is trying to get an idea through my thick head.

A lot of folks I know have been going through some really tough times.  The hard knock, life and death kind and the struggle to make ends meet kind, and the "why is life such a bummer sometimes?" kind of tough times.  November is not my favorite month either having my fair share of losses and problems in this month in the past. It just seems like everything has come to a head for a lot of people all at the same time, all at once.

I look at life as the Game that we came here to play.  We choose our roles, we choose what rules we want to follow, we roll the dice and keep moving forward.  Every once in awhile the Moderator throws down a challenge - "today you get a record blizzard" or "some one you love gets to have a terminal illness" or "today you got that new job promotion" or "today you win the lottery" (who doesn't want that one...?) and on and on it goes.  Now, we don't get to influence what the Moderator chooses to do.  But----(there's always one of those isn't there?) we get to choose the rules of our game, how we are going to play the role now that there is a script change in the wings, and who our character will develop into as it incorporates those changes.  We can choose to let sorrow define us, close our hearts to joy and only concentrate on the struggle but that option sure limits what our role can do.

Or - the BIG OR - we just keep playing on.  We keep putting one foot in front of the other, creating our role with an open heart and sing our own song no matter how much things are altered by circumstance.  It doesn't take any money to sing a song, it doesn't take any physical strength or prowess to hum when things get bleak, it doesn't take anything but heart to whistle while you are shoveling the snow.  It only takes being present in the right now even if the song you are singing is a sad one.

So come on everyone - no matter what happens, lets just keep playing on.  The rules in my game say that we are all in this together so we might as well give it our best shot.  I'm game - how about you??