In this game, we only get one choice. Once we are born we are players. The only choice we get is if we want to play with a finite mindset or an infinite mindset. […] And like all infinite games, the goal is not to win, it it to perpetuate the game.*
(Simon Sinek)

As I was reading this morning, I came across two sources writing about having.

Here is what they were writing, first of all from Paul Gilbert and then from Erich Fromm:

The drive for efficiency is actually making our live uninhabitable. So the business model of life will create have and have-nots and have-lots and will keep anxiety high as we try to maintain a “competitive edge.”**

The ego, static and unmoved, related to the world in terms of having objects, while the self is related to the world in the process of participation. […] He can devote his life to hoarding or to producing, to loving or hating, to being or having, etc.^

Such alignments are always interesting to explore:

“Interest” comes from the Latin interest, that is, “to be in-between.” I am interested I must transcend my ego, be open to the world and jump into it: interest is based on activeness.^

Interesting because these also align with what Simon Sinek is trying to encourage us to see life as being, namely an infinite game and, therefore, to choose the right mindset.

The finite mindset wants to win, to have, yet we have so much more than we know:

It is incredible how blindness and habit have dulled our minds. We live in the midst of abundance and feel like paupers. Our lonely emptiness seems to be the result of our desire to turn everything into product.^^

We receive not in order to keep to ourselves but to pass on to others.

We might, then, understand Fromm’s participation to be really about being held within something rather than trying to hold that something within us.

There are so many universes to be explored.

*From Simon Sinek’s The Infinite Game;
**From Paul Gilbert’s The Compassionate Mind;
^From Erich Fromm’s The Revolution of Hope;
From John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty.