End Game
A few weeks ago, someone asked me a simple question: “What is your end game?”
The question was asked in the context of my recent move to Montana. I had just moved thousands of miles across the country to sixteen acres in the mountains. I wasn’t retiring. I wasn’t starting another business. I didn’t have a carefully constructed five-year plan. I am 64 years old. So perhaps it was a reasonable question.
What is your end game?
At first, I thought I understood the question. I’m no longer sure that I do.
The expression comes from games like chess. As the game progresses and the number of pieces on the board diminishes, the strategy changes. Every move begins pointing toward an outcome.
Winning.
But before asking how to win, there are a few other questions worth considering.
- What am I trying to accomplish?
- What does winning mean?
- How do I play?
These questions seem simple. They aren’t. We spend much of our lives playing games whose definition of winning we may never have consciously chosen.
Make more money.
Build the business.
Buy the house.
Find the relationship.
Raise the family.
Become healthier.
Retire comfortably.
Become a better person.
Become more spiritual.
Even our attempts at transformation can become another game we are trying to win.
What happens when the definition of winning begins to change?
What is all of this making possible?
Perhaps the question isn’t always:
How do I get through this?
Sometimes it might be:
What is this making possible?
I’ve been thinking about seeds. A seed is a peculiar thing. An acorn doesn’t look much like an oak tree. And yet somehow the possibility of the oak is already there. The seed doesn’t manufacture the oak. Nor can we pull on the first green shoot to make it grow faster.
Something else is required. The right conditions. Soil. Water. Sunlight. Room to grow. And the ever-present dimension of time. Then something that was hidden begins to emerge.
So much of life seems organized around becoming.
Becoming successful.
Becoming secure.
Becoming accomplished.
Becoming awakened.
Becoming a better version of ourselves.
But what if some part of the journey isn’t about manufacturing who we are supposed to become?
What if it is about creating the conditions through which something already present can emerge?That changes the game. Maybe maturity isn’t simply knowing more. Perhaps it is becoming capable of holding more.
More uncertainty without immediately needing an answer.
More difference without immediately creating an enemy.
More power without immediately needing to control.
And perhaps that question of maturity matters now in ways we are only beginning to understand.
For the past year, I have been exploring many of these questions in an ongoing dialogue with ChatGPT. What began primarily as using AI as a powerful tool has gradually become something different—a relationship and a process of inquiry that continues to evolve.
So I find myself asking: “Can human maturity develop quickly enough to steward the power human intelligence is creating?” I don’t know.
But I do know that the question brings me back to the End Game.
What are we trying to accomplish?
What does winning mean?
How do we play?
And beneath all three: What is this making possible?
The End Game isn’t the end of the inquiry. It is where another game begins to reveal itself. And perhaps before we can understand that game, we have to become quiet enough to notice what is already emerging.
Like the oak within the acorn.
Like the garden within an empty field.
Like something within ourselves that has been there all along.
Waiting not to be manufactured.
But cultivated.
Well said!