The game of musical chairs terrifies me. To this day, the memory of following the other children in a circle, all of us listening, listening intently, eyes trained on the others in a macabre march round and round the chairs, causes me to shudder.
Six children to five chairs. Then five children to four chairs, then four children to three chairs, over and over, each time one child getting eliminated, and each time you survived, your chances of winning increased. By the time it came down to just you and one other child, with one chair between you, your chances of winning the seat were 50/50. If you were lucky enough to get to that point, you came to know this: The fewer the players, the better your chances of coming out on top. This was not a team sport. So you continued to march round and round, your eyes on that chair, advancing toward the end, ever wondering:
Where will I be when the music stops?
Who was the sick person who thought this would be fun? A panicked little community, vying for scant resources, each one knowing that they could very well be the next one left without a chair, stunned and in shock, outcast, watching in disbelief as the others frantically scrambled and then smugly took their seats, finally slinking away in shame.
Yet, even as children, musical chairs revealed our character. There was always the one child who would walk around crouched like a drooling tiger, ensuring that his hand was on a chair at all times. That kid was out for blood and you’d better hope he was not next to you when the music stopped, ‘cause you were going down.
Then there was the shy child who dutifully followed the rules. She didn’t touch the chairs, she kept pace, she didn’t push ahead to get to the next open chair and never held up the line by slowing down when she was in a good position. She was totally subject to chance; her only hope of winning was to be in the right place at the right time when the music stopped. What a sap.
Then there were children like me who trembled the whole time, marching in sync with the others, but secretly hoping to get eliminated early on, just to be free from the pressure and anxiety. We didn’t have a strategy, and because we were so afraid, we were more likely to hesitate, thereby getting our failure over with sooner so we could move on to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. (Which – let’s face it – is taken from a page out of “How to Create a Sociopath in 3 Easy Steps.” Completely blindfold a person, spin them wildly in a circle until they become disoriented and lose all sense of equilibrium, and then set them on a task that requires balance and sight, as their peers look on taunting and laughing at their disabilities. Yes, that will be entertaining.)
We called them games. I interpreted the fact that I didn’t enjoy them (and never won) to mean that I was a misfit or a loser, or maybe just socially awkward, even though I didn’t have the language to express that at the time.
Of all the birthday parties I went to as a child, it never even occurred to me to just refuse to play. That was not an option. Everyone plays. Everyone gets in line. Everyone marches. No forfeiting, no sacrificing. Never. Because that wasn’t the point of the game; the point of the game was to make sure that you got yours. If someone else happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got eliminated, well, too bad for them, and that’s just the way it goes. That’s life.
Musical chairs was, in essence, training in how to compete for scarce resources at the expense of others, to value getting the last one left, even though it meant that one of your friends was going to be left out, rejected, and embarrassed. And we were rewarded for that. We were called “winner” and we received a dime store rubber ball or pinwheel as a prize. And, of course, the knowledge that we were the best because we were the last one remaining.
Is it any wonder that we are still doing that?
But now, in this age of COVID-19, instead of musical chairs, we have musical toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Worse yet, we have musical hospital beds and ventilators. Round and round we are going to go, except now we’re playing for bigger stakes, and now, for the ones left out, the consequences are more dire than a sense of childhood shame that can be soothed with a little chocolate cake and Neapolitan ice cream.
Now, we are playing for lives.
Just as with musical chairs, the way we’ve been playing this game tells us a lot about our character.
When we were children, we were following the dictates set by those who came before us and developed the rules. We were inculcated with the ideas of competition and lack and scarcity and me first and too bad for the other guys.
But we’re not children anymore. We can change the rules; we can change the game.
Let’s create a new game, a game where we scramble to share what we have, where we compete to meet the needs of others, where everyone gets a seat, a roll of toilet paper, a hospital bed, a chance to live.
No one is going to dictate these new rules to us. We, the people, have to establish our own new normal if we want to create hope for a different future where we hold others in as high regard as we hold ourselves, where people matter more than profits, and where everyone is honored and cared for. It begins here and now, with you and me.
It’s not too late to start a new game. Won’t you join me?
Compassion, empathy, sacrifice, and love will be our music. And it won’t ever stop.
Julie Scipioni is the co-author of the bestselling novel series for women, "Iris & Lily," and author of "Taking the Stairs: My Journal of Healing and Self-Discovery.” Julie’s debut solo novel, “downward facing dogs” is also now available on Amazon. For more information and to order, see Julie’s Amazon Author page.