Is Love a Game??
(to the players.. and alike)

 To start with let me explain how I stumbled upon this question. I was attracted to a boy. Ignoring everybody's advice I chose to tell him rather than playing the recommended hide n seek game. There!! I made my MOVE. But I kept waiting for his that could top mine and after which I planned to rake my brain and find a better way to let him know what I felt and wait for his move again and so on. And during this entire period I realized, why am I using my brain so much?? Am I considering all this a game?? Is Love really a game?? If yes.. What part of it makes it a game?? If no.. Then why does Google shows so many results on ‘Love is a Game’??

When you think about love, you enjoy the liberty to compare it with almost everything on this earth, or universe in that case. Poets and authors have been very creative and exploited this freedom to the fullest to bring out the most unimaginable comparison-parameter into picture. Like garden, kites, birds, toothpaste etc etc.. But personally the most interesting and intriguing comparison made is by ‘a game’, because when we talk about games we are talking about ground-rules, cheating, deceiving, bluffing, competition, passion and game-plan. Though I love playing sports and games but considering love as a game needed a well-studied analysis and open minded thinking because I dint want to be judgmental and lose my insight into something worthwhile.

If we observe life, everything is similar to a game. At the end of the day we assess our accomplishments and failures to mark it as a good or bad day. Good day, we feel like winners. A bad day and we feel like losers. We set the rules and buck ourselves to continue playing. But this is entirely a one sided affair. What if we get a partner or already have one?? Should we take another separate game-plan for this situation?? Well.. I would find it rather exhausting. “They say love is just another game”.. To make myself more apprised about the subject, I asked some of my wiser bunch of friends and I was thrilled at the difference of opinions I found!

“Love is a game in which one always cheat!” –Honore de Balzac. When I look around and assess the crowd, yes that’s quite relevant to my generation. You will always find somebody messing up with the fundamental rules, playing stealthy moves, too scared to ‘lose’ their heart, more interested in ‘winning’ hearts of ‘many’. One of my dearest and most lovely friend in her 50s was kind of shocked at the question. In her opinion love is a feeling to be experienced instead of being emulated to anything, a ‘game’ being the last one. The entire concept has been twisted by the people now where human- heart and emotions have just become something to play with. Another valid point made by a friend who is in a long distance relation, love can never be a game because then you start considering your partner as an opponent and you stop being yourself, start being calculating. Ultimately the essential essence of this feeling is lost. And what if one cheats?? Then it’s a game for that person but definitely not for the other. Another cynical who had a severe heartbreak (like me) said love is a game because ‘boys’ are good players and they love playing football, volleyball and even with a girl’s heart. But then boys also have heartbreaks and this is what my buddy said who is going through one. He said it’s a game because it has two halves, first half where everybody is excited till it becomes boring. The second half gets the result on who will win and who will lose and eventually the game ends. On a lighter note, here is a rather weird view of what one of the younger generation said, because love is their hobby, some people ‘love’ every second person they come across and for other people it’s a good time pass and since we take up a game for time pass or hobby, love is a game!! Hence proved! A rather interesting stranger-friend of mine made a vehement stand, love can never be a game because it’s not about winning or losing but making sacrifices and adjustments which follow no reasons and no rules.

The essence of love maybe the same but definitely the meaning has changed over years. Welcome to 21^st century where life is so fast that sometimes you may be thrown out of the league if you cannot catch up with this pace. Where human emotions have taken a back seat and people have covered their priority-list with everything that’s materialistic. Where people find it very boring and waste of time to discover themselves but search for comfort in crowds and places where they can’t even listen their voice. The trust-quotient is biting the dust because everyone is getting stabbed by somebody really close. Where True Love is a fairytale and what exists is ‘The Game of Love’. One of the most impressionable parts of human experience is getting into a relationship. Everyone is either looking for love or trying to find a way to sustain and feed the love that they already have. And maybe in this process they make it a game. What they might have actually thought of was a way to make their love life interesting but ended up in plan where emotions and actions got manipulated to keep the flame burning. A healthy alternative would have been a competition where you just try to love your partner more than him\her. Things wouldn’t fall apart if you keep a check on pretending yourself to be something you are not and lay-off those shoddy mind games. When you ask somebody with a wounded heart, you will realize that love was a dangerous game, where the winner got away with a great-time and smile and the loser is left with a heartache and tears, who end up saying-

Why do I wish I never played,

Oh! What a mess we had

And now the final frame,

Love is a losing game.. –Amy Winehouse.

Oh! Here is what the boy to whom I was attracted said- It is not a game but if you think so maybe because you either win somebody’s heart or lose yours to someone. So it involves winning and losing and yes! Somebody has to end up being a loser.

Maybe love was never a game before but we made it into one now as a part of the survival-tactics, to save ourselves from the pain of being a failure or as a part of fun where you derive the pleasure by playing with somebody’s heart. Whatever the case maybe, it was never planned to be this way or was it?? Who knows..

-anouk