Its Only A Game

I went to a funeral visitation yesterday for a coworker. Its a sad time, the man was relatively young at 61. As I looked at the photos which gave an account of his life, starting young and moving to the days before death, I was struck by the thought of how short a lifetime is. What is 60 or 90 years?, its gone in what seems like the blinking of an eye. I looked at the urn with his name on it, with his tattered favorite ball hat lovingly placed on top, and I thought ... that's it, this is what it comes down to ...ashes in a glorified can. We all have to hang up our hat for the last time. We are here for a very short time on this earth. My grandmother uses to always say a phrase from an old  hymn at her hearing about someones death...'Life at best is very brief , like the falling of a leaf'....

So, what is it all about, this short time we have on this planet?

Later after the visitation we went to a restaurant. I have come to expect synchronicities  and coincidence occurrences daily. Its all part of living in the mystery.  So, it was no surprise that as we were eating a man walked into my view, who I worked with 25 years ago. He looked the same as I had always known him. He was smiling with that broad grin, looking very pleasant and mannerly like always. I talked to this now 89 year old vibrant man very briefly, but during our conversation he said something which he always repeated when we worked together, especially when things looked complicated. He always said it with a laugh like he knew some great secret. He would end a conversation by looking  you in the eye and say 'Its only a game' or in a group 'its only a game boys' as he walked away. Years ago I laughed with him but I didn't recognize how profound this statement actually is. Could this be the key to his seemingly healthy outlook on life? He looked at life as a big game...I would always add  my own phrase to his  'we just have to play by the rules'. So, its only a game and we need to play by the rules.

If we look at life as a game, we can then see the impermanence in it all. We will know that...this too will pass. We can be less serious all the time. We can enjoy life with a totally different perspective. Living  'Now' becomes more important then our story, with its thoughts of past and future. Life becomes mystery. We have our role, we play a character in the game and yes there is a rule set. Life seems to go in a better flow, if we follow the rule set. We have a choice about what we do, what we consume and who we spend time with. We can live in love or we can survive in fear, its our choice.

This is my takeaway from yesterday. 'Its only a game' we are playing a character in a play, called the game of  life, live well, and play well because eventually the game and the play will be over. Then we will be able to remove the persona mask, bow out,  and walk off stage.

All our possessions, our social status, our career identity, our appearance to others, our special abilities, our belief systems, our nationality, our race, and all our other collective identifications ...none of this is the real you, it is all props, settings, masks and personality traits that the character in the play is identified with. It all appears in a temporary construct, in a type of multi dimensional virtual reality, with a false self, who is just a character in a game. This character is not who you are at your core; that eternal essence of who you are. We may not fully realize all this yet, but the  day will come when death is approaching, that it will all become clear and then we will know.

Death is a final stripping away of all that is temporal and false, all that which is not the true eternal essential self. Is it possible to diminish this false sense of self, as we play the game of life?  Have we become lost in the character and forgotten who we are? Can we observe ourselves by stepping back from the  temporary character in the play with all its drama?  If we 'die before we die' as the saying goes, we can enjoy the character role without total identification with it.  If we see beyond the illusion, we will find that death, no longer has its sting. We will realize that there is no fear of death, if we can see it as a new transformation toward life without the familiar form. This is the final liberation of  the real you, the you hidden behind the character with its persona masks.

This is the return home, back  into the great mystery, united again with the very essence of life.  This essence is the intelligence behind the creative forces of life, it is based on love and cooperation, not fear and competition . We came from this loving intelligent mystery, and its to it  that, we return.


 I believe the painting (photo below) that I did in 2007 called 'Passage in Time' relates well to this post.

#098-2007- Passage in Time - acrylic on panel

We will all hang up our hats for the last time some day. Grandfather left behind traces of his passage in his small fishing stage in Newfoundland . The items in this painting tell the story of his life. The hat was his favorite during the last years of his life. The kettle would have been used on an outing at the cabin . The buoy was from one of his traps . The matches would have been kept in a dry location. The cod jigger is the kind he used all his life. The snare was used to catch rabbits. The axe handle end is painted red so it would not get lost in the woods.