Because every day you and I have to remember we have a choice to be an infinite player.

Every day, we are confronted, and drawn in, by many finite games and their players.*  Whilst we need to play some finite games (the airline delivers you to the airport it promised to, the student turns in their dissertation by the agreed time, your employer allows you to leave at the end of the workday), we can forget there is always a greater game of open-mindedness, open-heartedness, and open-willed-ness, being played.

The infinite game anticipates an unknown and undefined future, aiming to include as many as possible for as long as possible (and when something threatens to exclude people or end the game, the rules are changed).

When we remember, we provide ourselves with permission to live with humility, gratitude, and faithfulness – practices which enable openness.  And because openness to seeing and understanding more, through the lives of others, towards changing our goals and behaviours can be frightening and threatening, infinite players need to create spaces for boundarylessness to be explored, replacing them with horizons.

Writing this has helped me remember again, giving myself permission to be an infinite player today.  By the way, feel free to join in.

(*Finite games can be both sophisticated and subtle and all-pervasive.)