Playing an Infinite Game

In James Carse’s seminal work, Finite and Infinite Games,” he describes many differences between playing two types of games.

In finite games, there are winners and losers, beginnings and endings, punishments and rewards. This is true of any board game, but it’s also true in a larger sense, if you view your life as a finite game. One of the consequences (or necessities) of playing your life as a finite game is that you begin to see everything as scripted, as fated. Whatever problems you currently have, you’ll see them as a consequence of something that happened to you in the past (or even that you perceived happened to you in the past). Of course, this causes incredible misery because regardless of what you do, you can’t go back and change the past in a finite game. What’s done is done. You can’t even change the present because it was fated.

An infinite game has no winners or losers, no punishments and rewards, no beginning and no end. The infinite game is played simply for the joy of the game, and therefore, to prolong the game. When you see your life as an infinite game, a pretty amazing thing happens. Your life takes on a new story. The past is constantly changing, continually being updated with a new meaning. Your past doesn’t explain how you got to where you are now. Your present tells a grand story of the past, which will change over time. So, the past doesn’t become fixed. The present is forever changing the past!

As you play an infinite game with your life, fears will melt away. Even the fear of death, because death is just part of the infinite game. Death happens every single day in an infinite game, so you can change. Because there is no beginning and no end. This is the ultimate freedom. Free to discover, learn, grow, and play. All for the joy of endless play.