For the past few days, I have been hooked onto this online game call the Mystery PI. It is a game is which you are led to several locations, and in each location you have to find a list of items as instructed in order to receive pieces of clue to solve puzzles.
I first played with part 1 about 3 years ago and now is playing with part 2 with newer and more sophisticated graphics and rules.

The main thing I wanted to say is not just about how fun the game is but how it actually taught me something.

One interesting thing they added in the new series is that they do not just list the items as it is. For example, they will not put a dog as a dog, but might put something like a man’s best friend…
When I first started the game, I realized that I couldn’t find some of the items because I had misunderstood the hints, or to be more exact, assumed that the item to look for had to be “THIS”… the “THIS” meaning, something I had pre-concepted wrongly in my mind. In the end, I realized, I had let many items right before my eyes “pass by” because I was too inflexible to change my mind set. For example, I could be asked to find a lock, and while I was busily looking for a lock, it could have been not the physical lock but the words LOCK spelled out somewhere.

After learning this lesson, every time I start a new game now, the first thing I tell myself to stop doing is to set my mind on a fix answer and then look for the item. Instead, I have to keep lmy eyes wide open while my mind continues to generate possibilities of what the answer to the hint could be.

Somehow, I think it applies greatly to the way we live our lives too. Do we fix our gaze just on one side of the coin that we fail to realize there is the other side too? Or do we busy ourselves with trying to brainwash other people and getting them to agree with ourselves that we fail to recognize the value of their input and also to allow ourselves a fresher perspective?

I know of a few people who are like that. They make comments like “everyone” thinks this way; it happens all of the time… it must be like this. There is no some… no possibilities.. it must be like this 100% of the time. I used to feel the adrenalin to rebut those statements(just for the sake of it) but now… in the same way, I am training or at least making it my goal to first listen and then pick out the value of their comments. Probably they won’t change their minds about what they are saying, or maybe they will not listen more...

But well... once again it is up to individuals...