Playing Games in Life

As my boys get older, how they want to play changes. A Mom friend asked me, "Does your son (oldest 9yr old) still PLAY?"
I asked, "Like imaginary play?"
"Ya, with toys." she said. My brain hiccuped, you mean someday he won't do that? Oh man,of course....they grow up...what a bummer, I thought.
"Yes, sometimes...he is starting to want to play video games more, when usually that is my 7 yr old. That one is a gamer. But they both play together still...hide and seek,legos...I love it. I think it's so good for them, to play."

"Oh, well , my friend's son is about 9 and he doesn't want to play anymore. He just wants to read or play video games on his Dsi, by himself, so when he comes over, I don't know what to do with him."

We talked about "that stage" in life when boys suddenly see toys as babyish and retreat into a world of their own, where play is restricted and being cool or aloof is the way to be. It's heartbreaking to a Mom and sad to family members, it's like something dissipates...the sense of play, picking them up, twirling them around, getting down on the floor with them...floats out the back door like a wisp of a ghost...but doesn't have to be that way.

"I think it's important to keep playing with your kid," I add, "to show them that playing together, no matter how old you are, is important."

I flash back to when I was a kid. My parents would invite their best friends over and after dinner we would all play a board game. It didn't matter that I was 7 and they were 58. We all played together, joked, laughed and someone won fair and square. Sometimes my father, brother, and Fred would disappear to the Rec Hall, where they played a few rounds of pool. Sometimes I would break the unspoken code and sneak in in and join them, watching them strategize, discuss politics and hit the balls across the felt into the deep green pockets. They didn't drink alcohol either, they just joked and talked and had fun completely sober. Looking back, I admire that, what an example of enjoying life that is and being present and clear. The game created the excitement, it was the glue that held together the real reason for playing, which was just to be together.

Soon after that I began to hunt down a foosball table. The pickings on Craigslist were thin and far away. I almost forgot about it. I bought a bunch of board games at a rummage sale for 25 cents each and they played Life constantly for a few days. Then A neighbor invited us over and the boys went nuts on their foosball table..shrieking, cackling, high fiving. It was awesome.
So I checked Craigslist again, (I love the principal of not paying retail), and found a game table, with five games, foosball, ping pong, pool, bowling and hockey for 65 dollars. I was thrilled to drive to Trabuco, pay the kind man and squeeze it into our mini van.

Since then the challenges to play are daily and delightful. Their loud hootin' and hollerin' is a sign of living life fully to me. The competition gets your blood going and the camaraderie builds confidence in our family unit. Last night we played with our exchange student and even though I lost I was clear we have all won.

Games expand the present moment, create something that was not there in the previous moment. One second you are sitting, wondering whether or not to wash the dishes, or if you are a kid, why your brother chews like that....and the next minute you are facing off your opponent, heart rate pumping, body buzzing, screaming like a girl who just lost her balloon or a boy who just won the rodeo. Why is that? It's because of the way the world occurs to us. One minute the world occurs as mundane, the next, it occurs as a challenge...and we rise to challenge. We don't have to ever stop playing. We have a choice. Choosing to be challenged creates connections in the world, gets us off the proverbial couch and jumping into life.

So when LIFE occurs to us as mundane or hard or too much, even overwhelming...all there is to do is to shift how it occurs to us, and play a GAME in life.
Just like a game, where we make up that the ball is better off not here, but over there, we can make up that our bodies are better not here, but running a marathon, or selling 2x more product, or our kids can make up that their body is better of winning a gold medal or being able to earn a badge or championship. And when your marathon gets cancelled, as in NYC after hurricane Sandy, many of the runner chose to play a new game, called supporting the survivors and volunteering downtown. That is a game worth playing!
They are all games, made up for us to expand that present moment, to further deepen enjoying what is before us, be it a friend, a soccer ball or a job that provides income for adventures, home and food. Make it a game and no matter what it is, we will all soon be shrieking with delight.

Zen Honeycutt

The Drive to Win

We have all been there, either as children or parents of a child that didn't want to even try. Having a child that tries and fails is one thing. Having a child that doesn't even want to try is another. As a parent, there is a deeper kind of failure. What did I do to have this child so deathly afraid of failure that he won't even try? Why doesn't he want to learn something new, to play to WIN?

I experience dread and sorrow when my children give up and/or don't bother trying. Perhaps my own drive to win makes it so significant for them that hey resist it altogether. I have been known to make "getting it right" a pretty intense endeavor.
Their little faces droop and they look down and away, not able to look me in the eye for shame of disappointment. My head fills with WHY? WHY? WHY?
I want to shout, "It's OKAY to play and lose, just PLAY!"
Whether it's not wanting to try kickball, soccer or to get an "A"...I am convinced there is something wrong with ME as a parent because my children don't, in certain areas, have any drive to win.

When the South Korean, Chinese and Indonesian teams were eliminated from Olympic competition for not playing to win, it reeked... not of shrewd strategy as they intended, but of a failure of sportmanship. It is that lack of sportsmanship, of honor and pride in oneself that is most disappointing. Although we know they wanted to win, the game they played and lost on purpose was inauthentic to their human spirit. It struck a chord in my wondering heart...in regards to my children why would they not want to win?

Perhaps for them, it is like the badminton players, if they don't play the way they could, then in the end they do win. They win at being who they are, as they are. Their seven and nine year old identities aren't threatened by a bigger win. They will take the small loss and keep their image of themselves intact. Because a bigger loss is to threatening. It is there, in the lack of confidence in themselves to go up against a bigger threat and win, that has us scream from the stands at the players. It makes us mad. An athlete or performer is supposed to be courageous and try anyway, aren't they? If not they are cheating the human race.
I see now, that my upset with my boys,whether expressed or not, comes from wanting them to not cheat themselves out on living, from being committed to them living fully.

Whatever the reason is there for them, I take great deep breaths whenever my boys don't want to try something. When I see other boys running across the street to baseball or soccer practice, I sigh to myself and and let it go...and then go ask them about the lego tower they are building that day. I let go and listen.

When we signed the boys up for Cub Scouts, we hoped they would be introduced to new things. And they were. The first time Ben tried archery, he was good at it, but I coached him from the sidelines and was told by the trainer that I can't do that. He sighed and said "Geez, can you trust me Mom?" So I just stayed quiet, and watched and listened to the coach and to him.
The second time he tried archery, Ben came home radiant from his Cub Scout camp weekend away with Daddy. His chest puffed out and head held high, he told me how much fun he had. Then he smiled from ear to ear as his father told me how our son scored the highest score, he had fathers and trainers patting him on the back and telling him he was excellent. Trainers gave Todd their numbers. Fathers stopped their cars to shout through open windows and dust at Todd to "make sure to get that kid a bow!" before they departed the camp. My son, the one who previously never wanted to try a sport, had found his "thing". He announced he wanted to get a scholarship to college with archery and go to the Olympics. He wants that gold medal.

So we got him lessons with an archery Olympic gold medalist instructor, and last night he pulled the bow for an hour, came home with fingers raw and back aching. Yet he did it, and when the session was over, he looked up at the posters of his 17 year old female instructor, who was the first female gold medalist, and sighed. That gold, that is what he wants. Before bed, when my husband whispered in awe, the details of how hard Ben worked, and how he never complained or gave up, I wanted to weep with joy.

You can imagine how thrilled my husband and I are, and how the Olympics takes on a whole new signifigance that it never had before. Suddenly, paying a hundred bucks, if necessary, (which it wasn't, it only cost 7 dollars more a month) didn't seem too much to have our son watch the Olympic archery competition and live into his dreams. When he anticipated today's men's match he secretly admitted to his father that he hoped the USA archer, who is one of the best, didn't win, because then HE would be the first American to win when he goes to the Olympics in 2020 when he is 17.

I am clear that the odds are great. He may not go to the Olympics, he may not even want to after a few months or years. And that would be perfect too. He came up with this dream, and whether it happens or not only matters to me because it matters to him. So if that's what he wants we will do whatever it takes to support him. We are clear it absolutely could happen for him, and we envision it with him, in a mellow manner, and he gets starry eyed....and we delight in his desire to make his dreams come true. I know the most important thing I can do is not to shout encouragement at him, but to listen to why and how he plans to win. And if it doesn't happen, we will remind him, that what really counts is not the winning, or even the drive to win, which I thought was so important, but playing and doing what matters to you, authentically, fully self expressed and with your very all...that is the triumph of the human spirit.

Here's to people who who play, and "Go for the Gold" everywhere.

Zen Honeycutt
P.S. If you know my son,please ask him what is new for him, rather than telling him about this article. He knows I write about him, but it would be more fun for him to be asked and then to tell you.

Oh Boy! Oh Boy! Oh Boy!

Moments of truth from my boys:

After Bronson, 18 months old screeched and I saw Bodee push him, "Bodee! Don't push him, he's just a baby, be careful!" "He's NOT a baby Mom!" "Yes, he is. " I argue pointlessly. Bodee insists, "NOOOOOOOO he isn't, he just hit me too! He's grown up!"


"Mom, he has one eye." Bodee informs me seriously, about a house guest, right in front of him, who indeed has one working eye..."he's like a Pirate! Cool!"

"First you go left, and then right and right again and then left and then right and the Kendo class is right there." Bodee's directions to Kendo class which were exactly correct after the second time.

"I am a Great Artist!" Ben, who is indeed. And in fact just had his art accepted by the City Hall Young Masters Art Show...where's my bumper sticker?

I could go on and on, I have some real gems in their baby journals as well. My boys fascinate me.
The way Bodee lowers his voice like a threatening machine when he talks about Bakugan ( some kind of Japanese robot toy). The way Bronson can take my lipstick out of my purse and with lips pursed and shooting sounds from his mouth, turn it into a deadly weapon, charging at me with fearless gusto. The way Ben can cut paper out and with tape and a marker, create an intricate 3-D pop up scenes of action, adventure and drama.

Boys are such, well...BOYS. And I have a new found marveling at them.
It wasn't always that way. I wanted just one girl eventually and I got three boys...and I admit I sometimes still wanted them to be girls. When they didn't sit and eat dinner quietly for 5 minutes...when they race through the house and use every possible toy as a weapon... when they make joke after joke about poop in front of the neighbors daughter...

I just wonder WHY? Why can't they behave? Be quiet, be calm for just 5 Minutes????
I got this past weekend in the PAX workshop that boys are miraculous little hunters. They are out to show their power, to test and trial and win at everything.
It's natural for them to confront, to get frustrated, to pout and express anger. It's natural for them to help and accomplish as well. They are wonderful at what they do.If I set them up to win, the struggle will cease.

That's not always easy though, to know ahead of time that the boys might leave the fridge slightly ajar and the baby will get in there and dump my sweet and sour sticky sauce all over three shelves of the refrigerator. Nobody wins there unless you count that he got to win by feeling the sensation of smearing the sauce. I guess that's a sensory win. Hang on, he did win, he conquered the lid on the sauce!

So I have a new challenge...setting them up to win. Thinking ahead, and sometimes I do. Today, while Bodee was taking Kendo class...karate with sticks....getting sweaty charging about a room with a big bamboo stick, yelling Japanese phrases at the top of his lungs, Ben was learning how to draw perspective with Mommy as his teacher, and Bronson was playing with preschool type toys in the kids room. They were all doing what they love, being challenged and winning...and I get to feel like the biggest winner of all, a Mom of three boys who hit the Jackpot!