It was more than a decade ago, sometime in late 2011. The place was Fidelity office in Boston. I was attending a talk by a distinguished Executive-level employee on the nuances of Money, stock market, retirement funds, corpus, defined benefits, defined contributions, etc. all of which are centrally linked to what Fidelity deals with. It was a huge gathering and almost 200-300 people were in the auditorium and I was amazed at how well this person was speaking - so fluently and so fluidly that even the person least knowledgeable could easily understand.
He started off his speech with a reference to a famous game that had been played just the previous weekend and the home team had come out victorious. He indicated that we all could appreciate the game only because we knew the rules of the game. If there were no rules, or if we did not understand those rules, then one would just see the ball being passed from one person to the other. We would not even differentiate from one team to the other, from home team to opposition. The point being - understanding of the rules is so important in a game without which one cannot fully appreciate the victory.
He then correlated that sports game to this game in life which we are all playing with Money. If one does not understand the rules properly, then how can one excel, how can one create a surplus which would lead us to financial freedom which could, in turn, be considered as being victorious in our own lives. This analogy I felt was very powerful and what he said made absolute sense.
Now, cut to the present. Jan '23. I was doing some household chore and was listening to Sadhguru's speech. He was mentioning how we all are stuck in this web of transactions and that, in itself, is the cause for us to not get liberated from this cycle of birth and death. This constant urge to make profits, more profits, from small car to big SUV, from small house to mansion, etc. gets us hooked more and more into the rat race making it so difficult to get out.
Finally, he said this -
"You think you are playing a Game. But in the end you find out that you are actually the Ball in that Game."
🙄
