Object Lessons

Here we are, doing our best to stay abreast, struggling to get ahead, and all most of us get out of being in the race is losing. No matter how hard or long we try or fast we run, or who we are, the vast majority of us are losing. Day by day, grade by grade, job by job. We lose family. We lose community. We lose our selves.

And all along, it's been perfectly obvious. Take football, or soccer, or R. J. Reynolds. How many losers do these games have to produce before we notice the daily degradation of our culture, our humanity, our planet.

Competition can only produce more losers than winners. And the bigger the company or the more popular the sport, the fewer players win.

Surrounded as we are by imaginary trees, we just don't see the forest. We are led to believe that there is a way out. That all we need is the right game, car, house, spouse and an extended line of credit. So, it's almost forgivable, our not being able to realize the obvious, logical outcome of competition. Of sports, corporations, governments, supermarkets.

It's just about understandable. We feel lost because we are told that we are losers. We are so desperate to win that it never occurs to us that there is any other way to play. It never enters our consciousness that we might be happier in a different game, one that creates more winners than losers.

There actually are such games, you know. Games that we can play just for the fun of playing. Where nobody has to win. Where nobody ever really loses. Games like paddy-cake and peek-a-boo, jump rope and hide-and seek. Object lessons, where the object is simply to make it possible for us to play together. Simply to nurture community. Simply to celebrate enjoyment.

We think of these as children's games. But they are more than that. They are object lessons with very different objectives. They teach us that we are all winners. That just getting to play is victory enough. That no game is more important, and no prize more attractive than the simple act of playing together.

This particular object lesson is one that I have just recently re-learned. I learned it as a child, and again as a teacher, and now, after all my years as a professional facilitator and designer, I am learning it again.

So I've started this new page on my website. Finally accepting the nature of the games we've been playing, and the object lessons I have had to learn, I have no other choice.