The Game

I follow Seth's Blog and though I don't always read it, I did yesterday.  The title was, "Four stages of the game," and he writes:

• You don't even realize there's a game. (And any contest, market, project or engagement is at some level a game).
• You start getting involved and it feels like a matter of life or death. Every slight cuts deeply, every win feels permanent. "This is the most important meeting of my life..."
• You realize that it's a game and you play it with strategy. There's enough remove for you to realize that winning is important but that continuing to play is more important than that. And playing well is most important.
• You get bored with the game, because you've seen it before. Sometimes people at this stage quit, other times they sabotage their work merely to make the game feel the way it used to.
• And then a new, different game begins.

I love how it is titled "Four stages..." and he has 5 things listed. This connotes the cyclical nature of the game, similarly as explained by explained by Alan Watts in "Game of Black-and-White":

I have this saying, which was surely said by someone else before:

When we are all one, we've all won (the game, that is).  Remember, you must be present to win.