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The games people play
The title of today's column comes from a great hit of the same name by the Spinners, a great Motown group from a few years back. One of the compelling things about music is that every song tells a story about life. In fact, there are few aspects of life that haven't been captured in song. That's why music is so infectious.
We can make statements about life through melodies and lyrics that aren't nearly as direct or intimidating as saying the same words in a conversation, or even in a column. But alas, I am a columnist, rather than a song writer or performer and today I want to talk about game playing.
At the heart of game playing is fear and apprehension about what the future holds. Rather than confronting the future head-on with courage and integrity, too many of us live around the edges of reality. We don't tell people what's on our minds. We find it difficult to be truthful and forthright. We build barriers around ourselves for protection, not realizing those very barriers prohibit us from experiencing the wondrous things this world has to offer.
Barriers are limiting and playing games is limiting. But we are so insecure about who we are, many of us are almost compelled to act in this fashion. If we let people into our hearts and lives, we run the risk of being hurt, let down, and disappointed and for many, that's a chance they don't want to take, even though it's a part of the human condition. So many of us try to isolate ourselves from anything unknown, assuming, I guess, that the unknown is always bad.
For others, the unknown is good. The unknown is a challenge, a new world, a new way of seeing and living, an enrichment to our lives. I'm in my eighth year of teaching at McCook Community College. It's the longest I've ever been in one place in my adult life. My usual stay at a job was four years because things got to be routine and boring and predictable and I wanted new faces, new places, and new experiences, so I moved on. It was only here that I found the meaningful things in my life I needed to keep me anchored. Writing this column is one of those things. Teaching at MCC is one of those things. Falling in love is one of those things. Having friends I can trust and believe in is one of those things. But I would have never had the blessings I currently enjoy had I not continued to look.
Far too many of us stop looking too soon. We become satisfied with less. In many cases, so much less than we could have and certainly much less than we deserve. We get into habits of thought and existence and we no longer see the end of the rainbow for what it truly is; a hope and a promise of better things to come. Instead we settle into lives of mediocrity, we put our dreams on hold or banish them from our lives completely, and each day runs into the next day, with little joy or challenge or excitement. And to make things worse, we surround ourselves with this barrier than INSURES that nothing about our lives will change, that nothing can ever get better or improve, because we refuse to let new things in, we refuse to challenge the status quo, and we refuse to seek a greater happiness than we've ever known, even when it might be just down the road.
And so our lives become lives of half-truths or outright deceptions. We lie, or deceive, or withhold the truth because we want to make everyone pleased with us all the time.
The problem here is that no matter how hard we try, we can't be successful at this either. No one is happy ALL the time and no one can please everyone else ALL the time.
One of the things I've seen in young people is that sometimes they change their behavior, or their dress, or their attitudes, to please a particular group of people only to alienate another group of people that liked them for what they were. Or even worse, people change but they don't let anyone else know they've changed, for fear of being judged.
It seems clear, then, that the bottom line to happiness on this temporary orb hurtling through space is honesty. Honesty with ourselves, honesty with the other people who enter and leave our lives.
We put ourselves most at risk when we play games. When we play games with the truth, when we play games with our emotions, when we play games with other peoples lives. All of us have said this about someone else at some point in time in our lives, "I may not agree with everything he/she says but at least he/she tells it like it is." Or, "You never have to worry about where you stand with them." Or, "What you see is what you get."
These things are always said in admiration of others for being who they are and by not being ashamed to admit it. If you're honest about how you feel and what you do, you'll never be called a hypocrite or two faced by someone else, even if they don't like who you are or what you're doing. And in the long run, it doesn't really matter what other people think about you.
It only really matters what YOU think about you.