Life-Lessons from PlayZone.

When you are open to life, you’ll gain wisdom even from mundane things.

On Saturday, I decided to take the boys out to generally chill and have fun, its been a while they had such time out. I also used that opportunity to get myself, one or two things.My plan was to take them to see a movie at the cinema in the shopping Mall,but there was a great crowd waiting in line for one movie or the other.

The boys told me, they will rather go to Playzone and just catch their fun, so we headed to PlayZone also situated in the Shopping Mall. As we got into the zone, it was a play zone filled with all kinds of fun gadgets like the ones you see in the movies(now I’m sounding like a bush woman :D.

I made enquiries from the cashier on how they run things in their, as she was explaining ,the boys shouted, we want the PSP games. I had to let them know that I was the one paying for the outing and I had a certain budget for that day. We settled for the PSP Games,and was directed to the section after we paid. Another staff was directed to set up the games for them It was Mortal kombat-The complete edition.

Oh! How I frowned at it game because it was a fighting game, common boys not here again. As pre-teens , there are repeated editions of my children picking fights with themselves, the older one trying to prove that he is the oldest and deserve to be respected by his younger brother and of course the younger who believes he can talk,trying to be more outspoken than his brother , and some elements of siblings rivalry here and there.#theeverydaylifeofamother.

We’ve already paid for the game,so we have to make good use of the time slot and try to enjoy the game,I had to seat with them to watch them play. Little did I know that I was going to see my children in a different light as they played each other in a game of attack and defence.

In the next 20-30 minutes,that followed my younger son was winning, the game and I saw the older one( He is highly emotional,softhearted) his countenance had already changed and was almost about to cry, I told him that it was just a game, that he was supposed to be enjoying it, even if it seemed that he wasn’t winning any round.

The second and third round,yet his younger brother kept winning, at some point I saw my son fiddling with the gadget, pressing it so hard as if that was the reason for his inability to win. It was at that point that I had an “eureka” moment.

What was the other boy doing that made win all the rounds? I noticed that they both had a passion for the game but when it came to playing it. one of them was quite relaxed about the whole thing. He was just enjoying himself-because he was strategic about how he played

Winning in life is not a function of muscles and strength, it is the right application of strategies.

We are faced with a lot of competition in life, even though you hear, the only person you are in competition with is You!

Be that as it may, I found out from the young boys game that one of the ways to be at the cutting edge wherever you are is applying strategies properly, that can only happen when you know how to think things through on your feet.

Winning in life is not in the flexing of muscles,like the Yoruba proverbs says,’agidi o ran” meaning it is not by aggressions no be gra gra-to put in Nigeria’s slang!

The ability to think things through , gives us clues on how to go about the challenges that we may face, even if we fail and fail.. we must keep failing forward because when we fail forward we are truly succeeding. Learning from the mistakes of the previous failures to make for a better outcome.

I had to make the older one realise what was happening ,so that he does not feel that he doesn’t know anything, or to think that his younger brother is better than him.At the end of the day, the game was over , we went for some bowls of Ice cream and Pop corn. They were happy they had fun and I was happy to be able to do something with them outside of the house.

A great lesson learnt from there.

Looking forward to another time alone with the boys, who knows I might catch some ‘eureka moments again, to help on this journey of life.