Let the games begin

After more than 20 years in the corporate world, I am still amazed at the amount of territorialism clearly in evidence. A meeting is akin to a bunch of dogs or monkeys grappling for position. With animals it is clear what they are about, but with us ‘evolved’ humans, it is cloaked in all kinds of disguises which makes it all the more pernicious. Most of the time, I am blissfully unaware of this behavior and every now and then a friend will pull me aside and inform me that when so-and-so asked me a question in the meeting, he/she was not asking for information as I had naively assumed, but was subtly asserting their right to ask me questions. ‘Good god – don’t people have anything better to do?’ is my brilliant rejoinder to this. At other times, someone will say something humorous about me in a meeting and later on a friend will ask me why I did not come up with a rebuttal, and enlighten me that what I had taken as standard meeting humor was in fact a put-down and I should not let people take liberties with me like that.

At times, I do see the hidden jockeying for position and dominance clearly and that is even more disturbing because by that I can only infer that these tendencies still exist in me, for I would not be able to spot it in someone else if it was not present in me. When I was younger, I would get dismayed by such behavior and want to distance myself from it. It is romantic to think of oneself as the one sensitive, suffering soul in the midst of all the ugly chaos that passes for modern society. When I was young and disillusioned by the seemingly unredeemable nature of humans and the society we create, I hugged a line from a Hindi Film song close to my heart – ‘Tumhaari hain tum hi sambhalo yeh duniya’ – which can be loosely translated as ‘I relinquish the struggle to conquer this world. You are welcome to it. It is your problem to take care of’.

Once in a while, I even ‘participated’ in these games just to assure myself that my refusal to be involved was a result of choice and not inability to play the game or even worse, cowardice in disguise. At these times however, thanks to the practice of mindfulness which I don’t seem to be able to turn off completely, I notice that I feel pretty nauseated and a strong sense of revulsion. There is a lot of suffering involved and I doubt anyone really feels good playing these games. It can’t be pleasant having to treat all these interactions as a fight for survival. It can’t be pleasant having to expend so much energy in protecting one’s image. I think this is the fundamental evolutionary mistake –humans protecting their image in the manner that they would protect their physical being.

So as I have grown older and hopefully more self aware, what have I learnt? It is to see the motivation behind people’s behavior and then instead of rushing to judgement, seeing the motivation behind the motivation. When I was new to the spiritual path, I did not understand the tremendous depth of the Dalai Lama’s most common utterance – ‘Every being wants to be happy’. It seemed very simplistic and trivial. Now, I am trying to see that even in people who are butting heads with me, putting me down, trying to sideline me or playing any of the common corporate games that is played under the banner of ‘teamwork’, there is an underlying desire for happiness The guy who is trying to make his work seem more important than mine, is he happy when he is trying to do that? I doubt it. Does he want to be happy? I see him(or her) insecure about paying the mortgage on the house if he does not assert his prominence and gets laid-off. I see someone as worrying about how they will send their children to school if they are not doing everything they can to earn the maximum they can by projecting themselves as important enough to earn a bonus. Some others, I see as afraid that they will slacken and lose their motivation to succeed if they are not always climbing and scrapping. And I am acutely aware of the dangers of distancing myself from them and carrying an image of someone who does not play these games and is in a way ‘above’ these games. I have seen the danger of carrying any identity whatsoever – it is nothing but the ego’s attempt at separation and control. Clearly, I don’t need a self-image as a noble person who does not play corporate games of one-upmanship. I can just politely refrain from participating in these mind-games because of the suffering it causes me as well as others. That, I think is the middle-way – to not participate in these games but at the same time, not distance myself from everyone and carry the identity of someone who is above these games.
Let the games end!