Are you game?

Last night was watching a program that investigated the reasons behind what could have been a disastrous air crash. When the investigation started out, fingers were pointed at the flying machine for the failure of one of the engines. However, weighing the pros and cons and several attempts at recreating mock situations some surprising findings were unearthed.

The aircraft had actually delivered more than what was expected of the machine. It was discovered that some unintentional blunders were committed by the flight crew. Both the captain and the flight engineer had made blunders that could have cost them their own lives along with that of the passengers. Fatigue, lack of sleep and the high pressure situation they found themselves in, mid-air, took away clarity from their thinking.

In cricket one often hears talk about performance in a high pressure situation with crowds watching, with sledging bowlers giving you dot balls dished out with insults and sixes waiting to be hit for a win. There is a difference in the two situations. The previous is fatal where the circumstances can never be reversed, lives lost are lost forever unlike a game where you can await your turn to win, where you can practice and correct those flaws.

The air crash that never happened actually made heroes out of the captain and the flight crew. They managed to ground the flight with a relatively smooth landing. Though they got the passengers into a critical situation they managed to get them out of it and the machine initially viewed with suspicion got its due credit for being able to pull through inspite of adverse handling.

Now what is the point of all this discussion? Nothing path breaking really. It is just that when we go through pressure situations in life, we should stop and think about its insignificance compared to the kind of pressure situations people face in more adverse situations like the instance narrated above. In other words it would help not to make a mountain out of a mole hill. If we could enjoy these lilliputian situations, take the time to savour a game for its own sake, either literally or tackling the games people play around us in a figurative sense, then we would essentially avoid creating complex situations in our daily lives where none exists. Are you game?