May we all win.

And that’s just life isn’t it? Tricky and full of misguiding falsities. But if God were to give us a cheat code that takes us straight to the end of the game, we would have enjoyed and experienced nothing.

Ironic; The cheat-code cheats us out of experiencing life by delivering results without effort.

We find that our taste has become bland, and our ears monotone. And we search desperately to regain our love for life with anti-life escapisms.

And so, maybe if we ignore these god-mode, cheat-code impulses and reach for the “hands-dirty” approach, we might find ourselves closer to life, and thus fulfilled.

Albeit slow and painful, and often heartbreaking and disillusioning, the sad truth may be that the true enjoyment of life is found in the retrospective vision of suffering!

And so, let’s not shirk the work or avoid the commitments. That’s a perspective that we need to rid ourselves of as quickly as we can. Because it certainly is addictive; to be lazy. To be in our safe zone. To be unaccountable. And to not be aware of every moment wasted.

That’s a recipe for being ignored and inconsequential.

Let’s embrace the risk of commitment, and gamble our pride and reputation. Go out there and do something world-changing! Save a homeless person, start a business, get a dog, change jobs,  introduce people, join a club, or even randomly have a heart to heart conversation with a stranger! For each of us, it may be a different act, but the risk to each of us feels the same.

Yes, it’s a gamble. It’s a risk. But here’s what we have the most difficulty coming to terms with: Losing a life-gamble is not the end of the world. You have not lost the entire game. You’ve just sacrificed a pawn to get better positioning. In other words: You live and you learn.

The next time you engage in a battle, the experience of the last battle and the one before and the one before; those will guide your footsteps, determine your next words, and carry you a little further than before.

In the end, that’s the game: We all start off with one step forward-twenty steps back. and then we learn, and the next time we etch our way to one step forward-19 steps back… further and further until we start progressing again… two steps forward-one step back…five steps forward-two steps back. And so the dance continues.

And its a lifetime of playing, involving arrays of possibilities, many lost battles, and many sacrifices. But also many new laughs, new friends, loves, and experiences.

And the winner? The one who learns, changes, and executes again and again. The one who overcomes the obstacles of pride and fear. The one who above all, does not stop evolving. Does not stop learning. Never stops risking.

May we all win.