Christmas with the family – patterns again
Photo by: beebo wallace
There comes a time in most people’s lives where they feel the need to break free from the family nest and go off to do their own thing. In my case, I moved 200 miles away from my family to be in London, the place I know I’m meant to be right now. As much as I love my family and I look forward to a time when I’m back to living close by them and enjoying their company more regularly, I know for the moment that London is the place I need to be in for the things I want and need to do.
Coming back home to Manchester to be with my family for Christmas is a wonderful experience and I get a sense that things are the same as they always were. There are patterns I’ve started to notice in the way my family operates and how, inside our own little family universe, things operate in certain ways, certain sequences and even the content of many of our discussions are the same. There are tones of voice that are used to let other members of the family know that one of them is feeling the stress of organising everything, facial expressions that show whether enough milk was put into someone’s cup of coffee and sequences of conversation that always lead in the same direction and the same types of laughs and arguments.
Many of these same patterns are the things that make this place seem so familiar and homely. There are things that happen here that don’t exist in other areas of my life and those things make coming home special. There are also things that happen the same way that lead to the same arguments and disagreements and it’s those things that are the most fun to screw with. For a lot of people, Christmas dinner with the family or with the in-laws is something to dread and a nightmare scenario. Those same people have even gathered enough information to be able to build inside their own mental simulators, exactly how the day is going to happen, who will say what, at which point things will flip and get messy and who will be the one putting their foot in it.
That fact that people can go inside and simulate exactly what is going to happen in a given situation is to me, simply a sign that they can start to plan how much fun they can have by simulating what it will take to make things different. This is one of those skills that involves massive amounts of time distortion because when someone asks you a question and you go inside and find 5, 10, 15 answers in the space of a millisecond and even find time to figure out which answer is the one you’re going to say, that isn’t the kind of thing that happens in your normal state of consciousness. When someone at the dinner table says something that could either cause everything to blow up or for everything to go quiet, in those moments, you have enough time to think up, plan out, test internally and then do, so that you can start to change the way things work and the direction that things would otherwise have gone in.
You can go into these situations dreading what’s about to happen or you can start to notice what people are doing and make it more fun by playing games either inside your own head or externally. When people are laughing and having fun, you can notice what it is that’s making it so everyone can get along and laugh and if you want, make it so more of those things happen.
One of my favourite games to play is to notice how my own behaviour changes depending on the people I’m around and how the patterns in my own life create the reality that I’m living in from moment to moment. Being the person I am I usually change a few things around to see what’ll happen, sometimes to my detriment and sometimes to my benefit.
The fact that we get to choose the reality we maintain simply means that we’re going to start creating the most enjoyable experiences we can possibly be having, even when those same situations in the past weren’t so good.
Enjoy Christmas in whatever way you enjoy it most (where is my wine?) and I look forward to writing lots more articles in the coming year.
Love, Jamie
Well done Jamie, the Xmas wine does make you write some good stuff! Can you give a specific example of one of the games you played, and its effects – change in yours and their behaviour/and the overall outcome? best, Hasu
Hi Hasu,
Thanks for commenting. It’s been a tough week of relaxing and watching movies this week so my apologies for the minor delay in replying to you.
With regard to a specific example, as you know from spending time with me, I’m usually playing some sort of game if not just to keep myself entertained. The internet is one of those funny old places where you just never know who’s reading what you write and so for that purpose I’m going to leave out specific examples so as not to have people I care about chase me with pitch forks.
For the most part I like for people to try new things. I like when people come out with ideas that they otherwise wouldn’t have and I like it when someone who’s always done things in a set way, goes out and does something different and enjoys it. This tells you a lot about my own beliefs and values and what I consider important for people.
For some people the idea of “playing games” is a negative thing and you hear people criticise other people for playing games etc etc. The truth is, we’re all playing games most of the time whether we know it or not. To me, it’s more dangerous to be unaware of the games we’re playing than it is to be aware of them and to even construct new games that get people thinking, learning, smiling and enjoying more of their own life.
Now you could wonder whether this entire reply is in its self a game to get you thinking in certain ways about certain things, but it’s not
….I’m just replying like a good host.
I look forward to talking more with you soon Hasu. Have a great start to 2009.
Yes, Jamie you do like to play games and from “my perspective” that’s part of your charm. You write great articles but from a teaching/instructional standpoint putting in specific examples to illustrate a point makes for great teachings and not least better enlighten dumb readers like me. Examples do not have to be personalised, names can be changed and facts altered slightly to remove attribution. Food for thought?
Have a successful and happy 2009! Hasu:)