No one accidentally plays tennis. You don’t all of a sudden wake up and have the realization that you have a racket in your hand and you’re standing at center court.

But we do play other games, sometimes unintentionally: pursuits of money, fame, achievement, or popularity.

These are games we can play knowingly, but they’re also games we can begin to play without a whole lot of thought. And at some point we might even realize: “Oh my goodness. I’m playing that game?”

The thing about games, though, is that we don’t have to play them if we don’t want to.

We might even remind ourselves, “That’s a game others play, but not me.”

Or ask ourselves, “Have I accidentally begun to play a game that I don’t need to play?”