You are playing. The game. The games.

Which game? Maybe a range of games with different rulebooks: marketed looks, what you learned in textbooks, religion, false science and crooks.

Play the games. Just know you are playing. Be careful: the moment you confound these games with meaning you lose the only game worth playing. Do not pass go and do not collect.

I didn’t know I was playing games for most of my life. I thought competition was inherent to existence. Unbeknownst to me, I was playing the game of survival – a game which has evolved past the jungle and into the city. Modern survival: the game of self-preservation. The game of denying death and trying to validate a stable sense of self. My personal favourite validator of my self-worth has been academic ‘success’. Like a financial asset, I could accrue the value of my perceived self-worth through diligent effort. Success through competition felt like pure dopamine to my brain vein.

The only game worth playing is the game you play against yourself. The game against yourself is not like pinball or the pokies. There are no shining lights or Pavlovian chimes. It is the games you play within the walls of your mind, chambers of your heart and lining within your gut.

Step 0: Discover the games you are playing. Lest you become an unwitting disciple of the churches of marketing, religion and consumer mythology. The games that have been designed to cash in your desire for meaning. Discern the rules. Why are you playing? Do you want to play?

I have had to take an honest inventory of the games I play. And an honest inventory of the stories that give me reason to play them. The story of my ancestors and generations that have moulded a fatal attraction to a variety of gambits. Why these games? How does a colonial past, riddled with war and the division of land, migrants/refugees, create the stage for my life?

Step 1: Let go of the games that are not worth playing. Resist them with the utmost discipline. Resist with the disgust you feel from the images you see on smoking packets. Resist with the respect of what you’ve learned of bad habits. Resist until you can let go of the supposed prize that fuels these games.

Step 2: Understand the games that are worth playing. The games worth the trouble are those you play for the long haul. The games that you would want anyone to play no matter what token piece you embody. These games deserve your attention and participation.

Step 3:  Start developing your own game. With you as the creator, host, participant, bank and rulebook. Understanding life as a game rather than games as life is true knowing. Embodying your life as the game you want to play is freedom. What rules are worth following? Who do you want to play with? What is the objective of the game?

The game I want to play is one of rich experience and connection. I want to connect with this tremendously absurd existence and with others. I want to write to excavate my past and present. To unearth meaning out of the furnace of experience and creativity. I want to be a physician to connect with others through shared experience and shared healing. The rules I want to play by is curiosity, love, exploration and determination.