My 5 year old son just started playing YMCA basketball. He is one of the younger players on the team and a bit intimidated. I almost let him quit. One day he asked me, “Daddy, are the games we play practice games?” I told him that every game he will EVER play is a practice game, unless he makes the pros like Jeremy Lin. But even professional games are practice games. Just because you play for money doesn’t make it any more substantial.

“I do not judge success based on championships; rather, I judge it on how close we came to realizing our potential.”–John Wooden

If you believe, like I do, that “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience,” then our whole human existence is a practice game. We are already Gods, Buddhas, and Peace; we just need to re-member…