By Debbie Ogunjobi
Presumably life is a game where we all play for a prize. Not everyone is going to agree and I am not 100% sold on the idea also but it makes sense to compare life to a game we play to win.

All of us are very competitive and the competition is often with ideas in our heads rather than real life people.  We want what we don’t have and we keep striving for more all the time.

The game idea makes sense as I have recently become enlightened or is it educated about the nature and stuff of the games of the millennium. In my days games were Ludo and Snakes & Ladders, Whot and some very tame interactive pursuits.

These new generation of games employ all the graphics that technology can employ to create a scenario that takes one from challenge to challenge to attain level after level. I got into one of such games but no matter how I progressed to higher levels someone else was always ahead of me while some couldn’t catch up!

The similarities between some of the games and the process of growth in real life are actually much the same. In life we go from level to level just like the games, the difference being that in real life consequences are very real!

I was watching the News on a local channel while on holiday and a guest invited to a review of newspapers made a comment that saved the holiday.

“We all seem to have taken our eyes off the prize in the pursuit of different levels of success”.

He was talking about how much most people are so lost in achievement to achievement that they seem to have lost any sense of enjoyment. At that exact time, I was feeling very harassed running after children, trekking for hours and hours under the scorching sun, chasing photographs and autographs and I momentarily paused.

I paused to actually take note of my surroundings and appreciate it. Before then I had lamented to my friends that while our location was a child’s paradise it was hell for parents. I tell myself all the time to savour the moments and was surprised to find that many days had passed before the beauty of the situation actually hit me.

Instead of dreading the treks and the sun, the fast food and all the indulgence of a holiday, I threw myself into it and before long was having a good time. We were barely halfway in our trip and I was already making plans for the next one next year when I caught the snippet of that television interview.

The man went on to say, most people are on the fast track to a life never lived! He wasn’t saying things I don’t know or even believe myself but he was putting it in a perspective that breaks it down to even the dumbest of us!

The prize as he saw it was a good life! Now the million dollar question is this: What is a good life? Is it taking trips where you are like a bear with a sore head, snapping and reigning in the enjoyment of all around? Definitely not!

The prize in my case would be to enjoy the company of my favourite people in my favourite city in the world! I took the man really seriously and started looking for the prize in the little things; I had lunches, countless dinners and enjoyed my family and friends without jumping to the next thing and hurrying anything along.

Living successfully in the moment can be better achieved by breaking the moments into bits and identifying the prize. The prize of food, be it lunch or dinner is in the smell of it, taste of it and the company in which it is shared. The prize of walking is the scenery, the people, the air we breathe and the freedom it gives.

The prize of sleep is the surrender to subconscious; to let the mind wander off and retrieve information from the matrix of the soul, not to hold on to anxiety and toss and turn till we wake up more tired than before the sleep.

It seems a shame that the prize is getting lost in the pursuit! The prize of a good life is to enjoy it, while going through the levels.

Men especially are losing sight of the prize in their quest to succeed and provide for their family. Seems a pity to work for so much and not take the time to enjoy the family itself.

Women come a very close second as we can nurture everyone but ourselves and become a pain in the neck of those we love! If the past few weeks have taught me anything it’s that every prize must be won and savoured in every area of life, no matter how challenging.

I want to enjoy things I normally don’t even notice in everyday life, to give thanks for the opportunities God has been gracious enough to provide and never lose sight of the little pleasure that makes the big ones worthwhile!

This is one column I’ll be reading again and again to remind myself that the prize is not things and new levels but the enjoyment of those things and those levels with the people that make it all worthwhile.