The Game of Life

Is Goal needed in Life?

With Goal comes Success / Failure

With Failure comes Sadness / Anger / Disappointment (Should it be?) Failure is also part of life.

With Success comes happiness (Really ?). Actually with success comes ego, prioritising people, isolation. Which ultimately leads to sadness or creation of another goal (cycle | can also call it as dead lock)

I feel both Success and Failure are experiences in life.

All Human / Natural acts are experiences in life

Human acts include

• Betrayal

• Achievement

• Failure

• Disappointments

• Being ashamed

• Vengeance

• Mean towards someone

A few examples of Human created disappointments

• Lack of money

• Lack of power

• Lack of strength

• Lack of people (share | love | celebration)

• Lack of attention (voice)

A few examples of Human created failures:

• Unable to score marks in examinations

• Unable to get a job

• Unable to earn money

• Unable to achieve one’s dream

Following are considered by me as basic necessities in life:

• Food

• Oxygen (air)

• Safe place to stay

 

Where is a human life leading to?

Should he/she just work, eat and sleep?

I feel being peaceful and happy should be one’s goal of life

To be happy what should one do?

• Some say I’ll help others

• Some say I’ll earn more to be happy

• Some say I’ll learn more to be happy.

I feel none of these can lead to happiness if the path to reach it is not considered as an experience.

If one considers something as a destiny in life,

Not achieving it leads to disappointment and achieving it leads to over-confidence and ego

In simple words one should consider his/her life as a game. In the game of life, your move depends on the environment. The role you play will also depend on the environment.  A person is being defined by his/her environment.

The most important thing in life?

I feel one must follow what he thinks is right. This might / might not lead to success (The intenstion behind every action). But he’ll be able to 

Don’t blame anyone / anything for what has happened. Past is past. 

Forget the sadness and remember the key to happiness.

How?

If life is treated as experience, one will not 

• Have affection towards anyone / anything

Score

The game of life is very special. No game created by humans in the world matches its complexities.

A player ends his/her journey some random time / random place for numerous reasons (willing / unwilling / neutral).

How’s the score calculated?

Hinduism and Buddhism  says -> Karma - the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, decides future state.

So, they say that you’ll be playing the game more than one time till you achieve nirvana (Budhism) / mokcha (Hindhuism).

But what I strongly believe is you’ll play this game only once.

You can calculate the score in any way you want. Because this is only an experience. The way you use to calculate the score defines you.

Example,

If you calculate the score by subtracting the Adharmas and Adding Dharmas -> This is basically Hinduism way of calculation

You’ll be a good person (:) the term good here is subjective)

The terms adharma and dharma are also subjective.

You can consider any set of tasks as adhama / dharma

Ex) Some treat donating food as dharma

Some others calculate the score in terms of just wealth. I.e. no matter what you do, earn a lot and the one with more money will be the winner.

Some calculate the score in terms of pride and achievements. If many people praise his/her, the score increases.

Score can also be composite (Combination of power, wealth, dharma, etc)

One may also consider score as the happiness in his/her life. I personally like this way of treating life. If you feel happy throughout your life, your life will be the best 

In this way there can be multiple winners losers in this game at any point in time.

The only constraint the game has is that the game will definitely end in some time from birth (That depends on the experience)

• One can prolong it by being happy, eating healthy food, breathing fresh air

• Should he prolong it. What’ll he/she get? That depends on the way of calculation of the score

• Example) If one calculates score as no of places he/she visits, the longer she stays the better will be her score.

• Or if one calculates the score as exponential decay of no of days he/she lives -> it makes sense to die immediately.

I feel one aiming something and taking steps to achieve it won’t lead to disappointments if the aim is an experience and not the result.

Example, Learning can never lead to disappointments. 

Examination to access may lead to disappointments.

So? Am I saying no to exams?

The priority should be on learning and not examinations.

If one likes to play cricket, playing gives him happiness and score will be happiness

If score is calculated by no of matches won, it might lead to disappointments.

Does it make sense to learn something and not implement anything? Food for thought

The priority also depends on the score which a person used to determine the winner.

If you aim to do something, if you succeed or fail, you’ll be a winner only if you treat life and parts of it as an experience.