Last weekend, Ryan, my son, came up with a suggestion for a game we never played before. It quite a simple one in fact. All what we had to do, was to recollect names of movies we know. There were no rules other than limiting the movies to a specific industry, for example, South Indian movies only. Since it was a random recollection of movie names, I thought it was going to be quite simple. But as soon as the game started, realization dawned on me that it wasn’t that easy.
As the game progressed, even
the names of some of the greatest movies I had watched somehow eluded me. It
was quite a strain on my brain to dig deeper and recollect some of the well-known
movie names from the past. Not that, the more recent ones were easy to remember.
They were equally challenging. Nevertheless, we kept playing and had a good
time.
Next day, Mia, my daughter
came up with an improvement to this game. She suggested playing the same game,
but instead of movie names, it will be characters from movies and TV shows. My
first reaction was that it was going to be a boring game. What was the point in
stating the character names randomly? I was certain that we will be playing only
for a few minutes, and we would switch back to the original version of the
game.
The game started. One by one,
the character names started coming out. That was when magic struck! Each of the
characters identified not just became a part of our game, but literally started
doing a parade in our minds. We were living through the movie scenes with the character
and many times were overwhelmed with the emotional outbursts.
We laughed our hearts out
recollecting some of the comedy scenes played by the characters. Happiness gave
way to fear when characters from horror movies took centre stage. Excitement,
Amusement, Gratitude, Pride, Anticipation, what not?! It was an avalanche of
emotions that took us through an awesome journey as the game progressed. Little
did I anticipate a seemingly simple game providing us with truckloads of
entertainment. Both the games were a huge hit in our family!
A quick thought flashed my
mind. Isn’t this exactly what happens in our workspace? Sometimes we are offered
a new piece of work. Without any hesitation, we assume that the work is not going
to be interesting. More than once, I have personally experienced, how exciting
the new work is after a few days of committing to it.
Being unprejudiced is not an
easy human nature. While it is quite a challenge to overcome this trait, the
least we could do is to try and give a chance to the unknown. Who knows, we may
be pleasantly surprised by the power of emotions that get kicked in with the
unknown. You may even end up thinking, why you didn’t do this much earlier.
So next time, we get
presented with an opportunity, let us embrace the power of unknown and
surrender ourselves to the mystery and tell inertia to take a hike!
PS: I strongly recommend exploring
the above, both in your family and workspace. If you find it amusing and want
to thank my kids, do let me know. Rest assured, I shall pass on the compliments
to Ryan & Mia.
