Play Fair

Mom was always good at sports and amongst the many life lessons she has passed on to her children, the most important perhaps is the idea of playing fair. The idea is quite simple. In life be honest, give your 100% and then whatever happens will happen.

I was just taking stock of life and it just struck me. Mom’s influence has lingered on. If I can look back today and be proud of something, it will be about the fact that I have always played a fair game. At least I have tried to.

The reason I have been blabbering on about playing fair is because as you grow older, you begin to realize how easy it is to be tempted to be unfair. It’s natural to try to pass on your mistakes to others, it’s natural to try to take credit of things which have been done by teams and it’s easy to shine in glory that’s necessarily not yours. I received a resume a few days back of a person I know claiming to be what he never was. Now, to him, the idea was fair enough as the use of this piece of info meant no harm to the ones who actually worked, but in the bigger scheme of things, it was unfair and grossly so.

Sundays at 10 I typically play cricket with the kids in my building and I feel a lack of the sense of fairness and pride. Like typical kids they all want to bat a lot, not bowl at all and beat me all the time. Now I have no issue in that. But I have do have an issue when they want things the easy way. No effort goes into bettering themselves, no effort goes into actually trying to get me out and for all who know me, I am no Sachin Tendulkar. For example, they give up in less than 10 minutes if I refuse to make it easy for them.

Baseline – they don’t give themselves the best shot that they can give as they don’t play fair. And I have a big issue with that. If you don’t play fair, you don’t have the right to play.

It’s not that I am a saint following my own principles. I have messed up myself. I haven’t been fair to a close friend and it has been painful. It’s one of those decisions you wish you didn’t have to make but then you trust that one day you’ll be forgiven. And you do. You get a phone call.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that life is never fair but that does not mean we should not try to be.