Life is a Game of Telephone

Yes, that's it. I have figured it out. Life is basically just a gigantic game of telephone.

At least that's what we called the game when I was a kid. Did you ever play?

The game starts with person #1, who receives a message. They whisper the message to person #2. Person #2 whispers it to person #3, and so on, and so on, until it gets to the last person in the group. The bigger the group the more fun the game, because when all the whispering is over, the last person to get the message is asked to tell everyone what it was.

And of course, by the time it gets to the last person in the group, the message is nearly unrecognizable from the original. Therefore my discovery, that life is just a series of games of telephone.

Today I had an easy week, with only 2 days at my client and a couple of days free. Or I thought they would be free. Until I got back into the office and started receiving a flurry of emails and phone calls from different people in the company I'm working with. Everyone's in varying stages of concern, anger, panic, and lots of other emotions because of their perception of a new problem that popped up.

It was a problem, no question about it. And one that needs to be addressed quickly, for sure. But there's a great cyclone of activity around the emergence of this problem that demonstrates my telephone thesis wonderfully. It is a very manageable problem that can and will be resolved quickly. But almost everybody involved has a different perception about the problem, including who, what, where, when, and why.

Somebody thought somebody else was in charge of this thing. Another person believed that there was no problem at all, that this particular thing was working exactly as it should. The person responsible for fixing the problem had an emergency and can't fix it, which panicked two or three other people, who became chicken littles and ran around telling everyone "The sky is falling!". Everybody else is suddenly occupied in CYA and finger-pointing activities, because they're panicked that they will lose the game of musical chairs this great game of telephone has suggested. Last person to speak is left standing to take all the blame.

And guess who gets to calm everyone down, figure out exactly what the problem is, and see to it getting fixed. Me, of course. Partly because I foolishly thought I could get a couple of days free from the place and things could move along smoothly without me, just until Monday. When will I learn?

Sort of reminds me of the country right now. Kind of the same game of telephone, with one phone colored red and the other blue. Everybody's picked their favorite color and only listens to that phone, which of course conveys messages nearly opposite those of the opposing colored phone. By the time the listener gets the message on their blue or red phone, it's been filtered and interpreted and spun beyond recognition from the actual story. Want truth? Find somebody who's rejected both phones and is finding the truth on his own. But of course, nobody wants to hear what this wiser person has to say, because his message doesn't square with that of their red or blue phone.

I believe that today's beautiful sunny day could be called stormy and raining by, say, the blue telephone people, and everyone listening to the blue telephone would take it as gospel fact. They wouldn't even bother going outside to see for themselves; why if the blue telephone says it's raining, then it's raining. If someone with a red telephone says "It's not raining, it's sunny!", that person would be labeled an evil liar, because isn't everyone with a red telephone an evil liar? If someone with no telephone just looks outside and says "It's not raining, it's sunny!", well, that one's just a crackpot, never mind what he says.

I also believe that our education system is mostly about handing out the blue telephones to every student. "Don't try to figure things out for yourselves, just listen to the blue telephone because it's always right" is the message of our secondary schools and universities. "And if you see anybody with a red telephone, do everything in your power to destroy it before it destroys us!". Red telephones are banned, especially in the universities, and students too willing to brandish their red phones in public are subject to harrassment and possible expulsion.

Just check out today's biggest news stories, and if you're willing for just a moment to hang up your red or blue telephone and take a look outside (or inside your brain, if you have one), maybe, just maybe, you'll understand what I'm talking about.