The older one was a little more skillful than the younger one and was winning almost every game. The younger one was getting frustrated, the older one a little proud. They started to fight, and gradually the fights became more and more intense until they began to pull each other’s hair and cry. Still, they would not give up playing; they would still go to the Atari and start playing only to end up in fighting to the point of hurting each other. So, we, parents had to be after them to pull them apart every time they went there, which was as long as they were awake. Instead of being fun, the Atari turned out to be a misery. We wished we could find a game where both players always win! (I wonder if there is a game ever, where all players always win!) We told them "Guys, take it easy, it is only a game. It does not matter who loses and who wins. Just enjoy playing." Of course, they were not convinced.

I wonder whether we, grown-ups are any wiser (I am not talking about child psychology or about how to raise children). Do we behave any differently when it comes to dealing with our own wins and losses in life although we think we are wiser than children? We may not be bothered by a loss in a video game on the PC, but we lose sleep if our stock goes down, of course, in this case, we cannot pull anybody’s hair except our own. We do not look upon investing in stocks as a game; it is serious business for us. We want our money to grow fast but the stock market is like a gambling place and our stock does not always go up. Life is similar to a game in the sense that it is full of wins and losses, successes and failures, pleasure and pain; it is fun when we are winning, but not fun when we are losing. There are many things in life that we are passionate about: money, power, prestige, fame, to name a few. No matter what the objective is, there is always a chance that our efforts may end up in failure; success is not guaranteed.

In a moment of passion an object or goal appears very important; the same object or goal may appear trivial to others or even to us later. Ever think about why most accidents on the road happen. Apart from bad weather and malfunctioning of vehicles, many accidents happen because of drivers’ impatience. They happen because a driver cannot wait for his/her turn to proceed according to rules and wants to take over others or beat the lights, or cannot wait until intoxication wears off. To such a driver, the thought of losing a few seconds or minutes or whatever, is simply dreadful; he/she cannot take it easy. The worst form of impatience is road rage and happens to those who feel that it is utter humiliation to be passed by the other driver. We know they end up even getting hurt sometimes.

Life is like a game in another aspect also and that is competition. We constantly face competition for resources, jobs, power, fame, and so on. Our political and economic systems are built upon the principle that competition provides motivation for good performance. We put up with all the weirdness of our bosses to beat the competition from colleagues to get that promotion at work or even to just keep the job. After going through all that, if my colleague gets the promotion instead of me, it takes a while for me to get over it; if I am laid off, don’t tell me to take it easy! The spirit of competition and passion together drive people crazy, sometimes so crazy that once in a while, people come up with strategies such as the one used by a figure-skater sometime ago, who had her body guard break her opponent’s leg and ended up in trouble. So, we live in game-like situations all the time and our inability to cope with failure leads to fights.

The ancient Indian philosophy has a solution for avoiding such fights and that is "take it easy". It says: Do what you have to do to succeed, but look upon the end result, whether it is success or failure, with equanimity. It also tells us how to acquire the sense of equanimity: from not being overly passionate, in other words, by being detached from the end result.

Clearly, it is not that easy to put in practice what Vedanta teaches but the mention of this name brings to mind the most foolish of all foolish fights we ever have, namely, the fight over one’s religion. As far as I know, all religions describe God the same way, that He is all love and mercy, all-pervading, everlasting, impartial to all things in His creation, and so on. Yet, somehow, most people think that only their religion tells the truth and that other religions are bogus. They think that their scriptures alone talk about the real God and whom any other religion talks about is not God. The more one is serious about one’s own religion, the more one hates other religions and secularism even more. (I cannot understand why the present and previous Popes are not against Islam but they are against secularism). The "believers" want to convert others to their faith using carrots or sticks. Whenever they convert another person to their faithThey feel as though they won something, a favor from God or a victory in a battle (or a step forward toward domination ?). Passion about their own religion prevents believers from tolerating other religions; they cannot take it easy. The irony is a religion is supposed to bring wisdom, peace and harmony but instead it leads to fights only too often.

In an optomistic view, life does seem to offer win-win opportunities unlike a game, and such opportunities arise, you know when, when we are unselfish, when we care about one another, when we value relationships more than competition, and when we can take win and loss, success and failure, equally easy.

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