Keeping Score

Got to get my game back on. Sartre said that the fundamental project of humans is being. To be. I manage projects as a profession, and this post is pretty much a reflection on what I do and how I live.
Replace project with game. Whether or not Sartre agrees with me, that's how I'll substitute it. A game is simply a statement of an objective.

For example: The game of basketball is "putting the ball in the hole, instead of leaving it on the floor," everything else about it, are the rules (ball size, weight, composition, where the lines are, how high is the hoop, how many players, etc.).

So I play games, that's what I do and what I get paid for. The game can be called, "finish my work before the boss calls me on it"; though perhaps a more powerful way to frame it would be, "make a difference by doing [insert corporate mission here]".

What's important is, going back to our dear Jean Paul Sartre, the game involves putting things into existence, a creative act. The fundamental project to be, to have being, which he goes on to say - God.

Makes sense to me. Framed as "the game is to be god", that is a being that is whole and complete, in existence, with the capacity to cause existence of another (that is to create); the capacity to grant being.

Whether it's beating a deadline, finishing a proposal, forging a deal, these are acts that grant being to something. Things are in existence as a result of my action. When people say, that they do "God's work", they are speaking correctly. It is not contrary to the idea or concept of god to be able to grant being, to put things into existence, to complete projects, to play games.

I am neither theologizing or philosophizing; it is not my interest to influence the notion of truth. This is not the truth.

It's really just a reflection borne mostly out of a dissatisfaction towards my own productivity for the week before this one. I'd frame being as something beyond process. By process I mean works in progress. But there is always delay, results exist in time and over time.

What I can do is forget about the big games. (Not really forget, but perhaps shift them to the background) What I'll have before me are small games that resolve quickly, in matters of days or weeks. Instead of playing one big, long, and boring game (that has all the risks of incompletion), I'll play many games - all of which I will complete.

What is the purpose of games? Why do we play? Whenever I ask this question to training participants, I get responses like, "to win," "to beat the other guy."

What I get is that games are fun. Winning and losing occurs at the end of the game and can be sources of purpose too, but the activity in the game is fun. If you question this, just think about why you prefer some games over others, why someone would play a MMORPG over something like pong.

And what I get is that I have the most fun playing when I play full out. I played lots of games when I was a boy:

teks (trading cards with serialized movie scenes in comic book/storyboard format)

patintero
football base (an unholy marriage of baseball and futbol, super fun)
cops and robbers/black 1-2-3
variants of tag (habulang-upo, langit-lupa-impyerno, monkey-monkey - yes that one, with "a rickiticky-tee and a blue-black sheep")
trumpo (wooden tops spinning on iron nails)
cola-sponsored yo-yos (walking the mello-yello dog anyone?)
patuan (using pebbles, or shards of clay pots as marbles)
kalog (teks, only with bottle caps/crowns; with all sorts of things at stake: toy soldiers, cigarette wrappers, bottle cap collections)
jolens (marbles)
the one where you flatten a bottle cap/crown, and using yarn turn it into a twirling razor of death (the game is to cut the yarn of your opponent before he cuts yours in a razorcrown face off)
tumbang preso
chinese garter
Pepsi: 7-up! (Blueberry Hill on Takeshi's Castle)
saranggola (kites, though I was really only a boka-boka flier)
chato (fave! a game of sticks)
taguan (hide and seek)
barilan (gunplay)
piko (hopscotch)

I'm sure there were more. Conspicuously absent is sipa. I just never got the hang of it.

I look at this list and I see that most of these games are really simple, which is to say they are elegant. I mean, they are quick to learn - as there were no written rules or instructions, they traveled from generation-to-generation, or from neighborhood-to-neighborhood. Kids can assimilate and re-distribute them completely without organization or any formality.

And my god they were fun. I had so much fun playing. I was never dominant in any of them. But how did I manage to have so much fun playing?

I think it's just because I wasn't thinking at all. I was just playing full-out, with abandon, and left everything on the playing field (or streets, to be specific).

So the game is, to frame the things that I do, the projects on my plate, as games in themselves. In the pursuit of the outcome, the product is actually play.

That's the game.