All around me people are playing the Spin and Win game. They’re totally engrossed, almost totally serene in their absorption! This in itself strikes me as rather funny. It definitely strikes me as being rather funny. Do you know what the big fat joke is here? The big fat joke is that no one ever wins. The big fat joke is that ‘everybody spins but nobody ever wins’.
‘So why is it such a big fat joke?’ you ask. ‘What’s so damn funny?’ Well, I’ll tell you. Now that you come to mention it, I’ll tell you. The joke is – like I say – that we’re all so damn super-serious about it, and yet at the same time no one ever wins. No one ever will win – that was never on the cards, that was never a possibility. I can tell you here and now that this is an absolute given – there is no possibility whatsoever of anyone ever winning. This being the case then why are we all so damn serious about it? Why do we keep at it as if we have got a perfectly good chance of winning, even though no one ever has and no one ever will? What the hell are we playing at here?
When you notice someone going around with a particularly serious expression plastered on their face (going around the place with that particularly serious expression on their face that we adult human beings tend to have) then ask yourself this question – ‘What the hell are they playing at?’ The next time you notice your own face in the mirror and you’ve got that serious ‘I’m playing the Spin and Win game’ expression on your face, then take a moment to ask yourself that question. Ask yourself “Just what it is that I’m playing at?’ I know you won’t of course. I’m only saying this by way of a device, by way of a literary contrivance. I know you won’t ask yourself this question because no one ever does. That would kill the game you see, and who wants to do that? The whole point of playing the Spin and Win game that we don’t want it to stop. The whole point of playing the Spin and Win game is that we desperately want to carry on thinking that we are going to win. At some point, at least…
It’s not just that we have absolutely zero chance of ever winning, it’s not just that ‘no one ever did and no one ever will’. It’s that there’s no such thing as winning! It’s a meaningless concept. Winning doesn’t exist. There’s this word ‘winning’ that we use in everyday parlance but it means absolutely nothing. It’s a hollow concept. There’s spinning are right and no one can deny this. There’s spinning for sure – no matter where you look you can see people spinning. Spinning like tops, they are. Spinning as if their lives depended upon it! What else do we ever do apart from spinning, for God’s sake? We don’t even know how not to spin, if the truth were to be known.
And it’s not as if we enjoy spinning either – it’s not as if we enjoy spinning for the sake of it. Oh no – we spin to win. That’s the long and short of it. That’s only possible justification for it. We spin because we want to win, not because of the joy of spinning! It’s like throwing dice or tossing a coin in the air to see if it comes down heads or tails – we don’t do this just for the fun of it. You bet we don’t! We’re being serious here; look at gamblers’ faces – aren’t they always serious? Gamblers are the most serious people in the world. We want to win because winning is so good, because winning is so great. It’s the greatest thing in the world! We throw our hats in the air and shout ‘whoopee!’ Everyone knows that winning is the greatest thing in the world – we all understand that. We don’t have to go up to someone and explain to them that winning is great! No no no. You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do that because every last one of us knows it already.
And yet there is no such thing as it! That’s the crunch, that’s the rub. Do you get what I’m saying here? There’s no such thing as winning. We made it up. It’s a fiction, it’s an empty word. Never was there a word that was emptier. That’s the big fat joke, then. That’s it right there. No one can tell me that this isn’t pretty funny! Not only is it funny in a humorous way, in a big fat ‘laugh your head off’ type of way, it’s also funny in a downright weird, downright spooky kind of way. It’s freaky shit, when it comes right down to it. Not that anyone ever notices, of course. Not that any anyone ever comments on the utterly bizarre nature of our behaviour. God forbid! God forbid we should do that.
Spinning is suffering, you see. That’s the rub of the matter. Didn’t the Buddha say that? Spinning is suffering. We only spin because we think that we are going to get something for it. We only spin because we think that we can spin our way to happiness. We only spin because we think that one day we can hit the jackpot and that’ll make all of our suffering worthwhile. Make it all meaningful. But what do we think the jackpot is going to be, that’s the question isn’t it? What exactly do we think it’s going to be, this fantastic ‘reward’ for all our spinning? Just what the hell do we think that reward is going to be? But that’s the old ‘Spin and Win’ game anyway! That’s how it goes. That’s how it works. That’s it in a nutshell. It’s definitely a bit of a joke, wouldn’t you agree? For sure it’s a bit of a joke…..
