My housemate Jason and I had a very interesting conversation about people who like to play games. For our dicussion, playing games represented people who like to use others in an attempt to win power over them.
Take for example my other housemate Chris Brown. Chris Brown got so deathly ill, that his small cold evolved to pnemonia. His face looked pale, and he was coughing up blood into the kitchen sink on a daily basis. Jason felt really bad for Chris, so he did what any good neighboor would do who had a father as a doctor: he called him up and told him about Chris B.
Jason explained Chris Brown’s symptoms to his father, so his father quickly came over. Jason’s dad gave Chris a checkup, and he concluded that he had pnemonia, and that for his age, this is the worst he has seen in a long time. He said that people that come to him in the E.R. are not even this bad. After diagnosing him, he gave him a perscription and the money to take care of his ailment. This was truly a generous thing that Jason’s dad did for Chris Brown.
Three days later, Chris Brown went from being secluded to his room writhing in pain to moving around and lifting heavy objects with no coughing in site. Jason’s dad gave him some very strong medicine, and it worked like a dream.
Now, here’s where Chris Brown plays games. A couple of days after Chris was healed, he knocked on Jason’s door. Jason opened it, and Chris paused for a moment, looked up at Jason, and inhaled and exhaled a large amount of air. He smiled back at Jason and said “I can BREATHE”. Now, I bet right about now you the reader might expect Chris Brown to tell Jason how grateful he was to him — oh no, he does better. He tells Jason right in his face that what his father did really didn’t help him, and that he could have gotten better on his own. This is the end of the story.
You can only imagine how poor Jason felt. He was serious about helping Chris Brown, but Chris did not even give him the time of day. In this scenario Chris Brown was playing games. Typically when someone goes out of their way for you, you own them something back. Not only that, temporarily, you are beneath them in status. In this case, Chris Brown did not want to be beneath Jason in status and did not want to owe him anything. It was a power play on Chris’s part to not acknowledge Jason’s help.
Jason and I talked about people who play games and relationships. When you get one person who plays games and another person who plays games, they get along, because they are both trying to use each other and they form a friendship. On the other hand, when you put one person who is serious with a person who likes to play games, then that relationship will go sour.
This is an important lesson even in the blogging world of friends. We have bloggers who like to play games, and bloggers who are serious. I can vouch that I am a blogger who is serious about relationships, and what I have noticed, is that all the bloggers I am friends with are serious too and do not play games.
Many people who are in power positions play games. An excellent example of this is in “Survivor” or any other real life show on television. It is the people who play games and manipulate and want power who tend to get that power. It is also true, however, that people who do not play games are the ones that get used and abused.
Being used and abused is a sad state of affairs. There are ways that one who is serious can protect themselves. This is for another post though being that this one has been quite long enough.
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