Rules of your game
Yes, it’s been a while, I know. That doesn’t mean that nothing’s been happening in the world of the Imaginator™, it just means that I’ve had nothing amazing, earth shattering, or even interesting to add, so I thought I’d rather do a Ronan Keating and Say Nothing at All than waste an e-forest of worthless bytes and abuse your time on words that don’t mean a thing.
I recently responded to an email from my old school, and volunteered to organize the 25-year class reunion. Anyone who says anything about my age can immediately remove themselves from the distribution list. Rubbing stuff like that in is just not kind. Or cool. And it doesn’t make you a nice person. So don’t even think about it.
I’ve been trying to trace about 100 MIA’s (“missing in action” for those of you who don’t watch action movies), and I posted a list of them on a private page on the net so my classmates could help me track them all down. Today I received another email from one of my old schoolmates telling me that another of the people on the list had passed away. In the last week, I’ve heard of 3 classmates who are no longer with us, apart from the one that I already knew about who died unexpectedly between one coffee meeting this side of Christmas, and the other side of the new year when we were going to get together. It was like getting pounded further and further into the ground like a peg being hit repeatedly by a mallet. Today’s news spun me into a spiral of depression that took me an hour off work, and a Wimpy breakfast and cappuccino to get me to walk into the office.
This newsletter is not meant to depress you at all. I believe that life’s lessons happen when they happen for a reason and that if you don’t take the message that’s coming to you loud and clear through the megaphone of the universe, then you deserve to stand like an ostrich with your head in the ground and get your butt kicked.
I think I’ve gone through more life changing experiences in the last four years than I have in the last forty, and today was another of those. It woke me up to the simple truth that we’re playing an unfair game with rules we can’t fathom, with fragile playing pieces, and a board that only has squares and pictures on it if you want it to have.
The unfair rules are simple. You all start on day 1, and your day 1 is whenever and wherever that happens to be. Jo’burg, London, Paris, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur – you don’t get to choose. And the day you join the game isn’t up to you either. In many cases, neither is where you go to school, where you live – the formative years of your life get given to you before you have a chance to say “Oi!”. Then the game gets interesting, because some of us see the squares, and roll the dice, and play by what we understand as the rules, and some of us roll the dice, and take no notice of the squares. Kind of like the awakening moments in The Martrix – the day you realize that the squares on the board are only there if you want them to be there, the rules suddenly become very different indeed.
But there’s one rule you can’t make yourself or change: when and how you leave the game. That, apparently, is also written up somewhere on a scoreboard that you don’t get to see, until, of course you leave the game. But you can’t press “reset” and start again.
So, today’s message is simple. Don’t wait for the wake up call before you wake up. There is time now to do the things you want to do, to tell the ones around you how important they are to you, to breathe in the smell of the earth after the rain and be invigorated by the feeling of cold water on your skin, to abandon your fear and shout out loud in a hall full of strangers, to write words that move people even if it’s only one page of words and it’s only read by one person, to step out of your comfort zone, and stand up and be seen and heard.
I last wrote an article for the Imagin8 readers in September last year. A long time ago, I know. Since then, I’ve spent some time on one of my passions – music. I’ve always wanted to get up on stage and sing, but never done anything about it short of plucking a few strings on my guitar from time to time. In November last year I wrote my first song. Right now (May 2008), I’ve got 9 original songs, and I’ve done 3 live performances – 2 at Tanz Café, and one at the clubhouse in my complex. (I entered an abridged version of the lyrics to one of the songs in The Write Co’s April poetry competition – you can vote for me as the April winner if you email Amanda@thewriteco.co.za and tell her that my poem was your favourite before the end of May 2008.)
What I’m saying is that although we’re not all extroverts, or performers, or writers or poets, we’re in this game. My game board didn’t have a square on it that said “Tanz Café” till I put it there. Nor did I have 9 “Original Song” cards in my deck until I put them there. Take a careful look at the squares on your game board, and the cards you hold in your deck, and if you don’t like the squares, or the cards you’ve been dealt, change them.
If only the good die young, then I’m glad I turned bad.
Till next time.
The Imaginator™
Adam Rabinowitz is the Senior Lecturer at Regenesys Business School
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