The Games We Play

We are playing robo-sheep today.

I hope that by the time you read this, you have long-forgotten this game we play. I hope that by this time, you no longer need to live your life just by surviving. I hope that by this time, we can already allow ourselves to know what happiness truly looks like.

So I am going to tell you now how we play this game, under the assumption that you have long-forgotten about it, that you no longer need it to live your life by playing it, that you are now happy.

We invented this game on the day we realised that everyone else is living a different life than ours, and that although we know that we do not want to be living the same life as theirs, we needed to pretend we did, so they can’t tar and feather us, so they can’t chase us out of this house, so we won’t be homeless. We know that we only have this house to shelter us out of familial and social obligations. We know that, if given a choice, no one wants us to be here. But we also know that there is a certain decorum that we need to adhere to in order to be allowed to stay, in order to be allowed to have this roof over our heads and food in our plates, at least until your sister grows up a little bit more, at least until I can go to work and earn money and not be dependant on anyone anymore.

We need to follow their rules, we need to live our day-to-day according to their philosophies, their beliefs, and we need to do everything their way. We need to be herded into our room when they don’t want us spoiling their mood for family time, their family, their family time, we need to understand that too, that we are robots who only do, only talk, only feel what they want us to, we are machines that await buttons to be pushed, we are part of this collective whose morals goes against everything we believe in. Just until we can leave. Just while we’re still here. Just until we can breathe again.

When we play this game, we are also freeing them from their responsibility of us, we are freeing them from having to worry about us, we are freeing them by confining ourselves in this contraption that no one outside of it sees it as a contraption, blessed be us, blessed be to those who are keeping us alive, blessed be those who allow us to be here and so here we are, three robo-sheep. I won’t even baa because the robot part is low on batteries.

There are too many rules to the game, too many for me to list down here, but I think I have managed to revive your memory of it by now. You’ll know the rules in your bones, you’ll understand how to play with your gut. We have lived too many lives as robo-sheep not to get it by now.