Working from home. Home schooling. I hope families together at home these days are playing games together too, with no one getting too serious. (I am long past being in that setting, but I like to think I’m a good sport at games, except Scrabble. I hate losing at Scrabble.) That would miss the point, if there is one, and it would make it too much like work, and the games in that setting. Home, of course, should be free of that kind of game. Manipulation. Control. Looking better than the other who is supposed to be part of your team.
Here’s a theory: People who play those destructive kinds of games at work don’t have enough fun playing real games. They are too much at home in a setting where there are substantial egos, quite prepared to wield whatever weight they have. They attack a straw person version of you. They preface questions with “Please don’t take this personally, but …”, counting on others to assume any concern you have is because you are taking it personally, or being defensive, or taking it the wrong way, or not in “the spirit in which it is intended.” Right.
It would be great if folks can be free of that. It is great if, at home at least, you can have the seemingly simple thing an astounding number of people eagerly long for: a real conversation, not infused with some agenda. That would be great for all relationships: life partners, parents and kids, whoever (It’s probably not gonna happen with your cat, however).
It would be wonderful if the home can be what I once heard church referred to as: a therapeutic world (one reason among many why any kind of abuse is horrible in either setting).