Indoor Foosball

A few days back, I had visited a mall, where we discovered this amazing game called Foosball. Its like football as a indoor game. As you can see in the above image, there are rods, which can be moved in a single direction. You can make the ball move using those human dolls, which can be rotated about the axis of rod. Its a game played by 2 teams, and each team has 2 players. On each side, each team member holds his/her rods and tries to score a goal by moving the rods back and forth and frequently rotating it to make the human doll hit the ball. The one near the goal is defender and the other is the attacker.

For most of us this was new, and we really enjoyed it when we tried this. After sometime, we split into 2 teams and began playing a friendly match. I was the defender. In one of the games, we were leading the game with 2-0. I suddenly felt that since a long time I was only at the defender position. For a change, I wanted to play at the attacker’s position. So, I asked with my team mate for exchange of places to which he agreed. When he was the defender, my friend couldn’t defend a couple of goals. Immediately, after that he told in a low voice I am not good at this position, we are loosing, lets shift positions. To which I replied, Does it matter? Why don’t we play for fun and I continued at the attacker’s position.

This was not the first time such a thing happened. Many times I have noticed people play games with a intention of winning, but not with an intention of enjoying the game. I always wondered why people take winning and loosing a game seriously, where they literally don’t have anything to loose or win. I don’t blame people for having a competitive nature, but I feel bad for the people who play a game only for sake of winning miss out a lot of fun.

Nevertheless, my concern was what makes people to take winning in casual games so seriously. And it is not just about games. We tend to look almost many things life like these games, where the focus is on winning the game. This reminded me of an Aaron’s blog where he speaks about how schools has made the concept of failing a miserable thing. How the system has made people afraid to try new things because they are afraid to fail. Aaron tells that the solution to it is to detach people’s actions from their worth. In his words…

The real piece, it would seem, is finding some way to detach a student’s actions from their worth. The reason failing hurts is because we think it reflects badly on us. I failed, therefore I’m a failure. But if that’s not the case, then there’s nothing to feel hurt about

In this case, winning and loosing affect people’s thoughts about themselves. Winning attaches a sense of worth and loosing attaches a sense of disdain. Why do most of the people think that way? I guess, that is because schooling system encouraged them to think of every thing as a race. The atmosphere of the classroom rarely encourages you to enjoy the process of learning. Instead the focus is laid on cracking the exam. They are encouraged to look their fellow learners as competitors. The ones at the top of the marks list are adulated and the ones at the bottom are despised. So, people continue to look other aspects of life the same way. Almost in every aspect of life, the goal becomes to defeat someone or be better than most of them or seek validation from people, but not to enjoy the journey.

I don’t know the solution to this. But I am sure of one thing, that it is a horrible way to lead life, at least for me.

Appendix

  • Seeking validation is not a bad thing. Our brain wanting to seek validation from other people is due to evolutionary reasons. Humans used to stay together and hunt for food in groups. It was important in those days to be a part of group, to stay safe from other predators and have food. Staying in a group increased your prospects of survival. Hence, humans want to seek validation so that they want to be accepted as a part of the “group”. But doing things for the sole purpose of seeking someone’s validation is awful.
  • Source of Foosball table image - https://www.pinterest.com/pin/542965298809586218/