Are You Playing a Finite Game of Fear….

…… or an Infinite Game of Becoming?

The sun hung effortlessly in the vast Colorado sky, radiating warmth but without the oppression of summer heat.

At 65 degrees in late February, Fort Collins felt like a sanctuary, a temporary reprieve from the world’s relentless upheaval.

I laced up my Puma shoes and stepped outside, seeking nothing but movement—walking as a means of recalibration, of returning to center amid the chaos of today’s world.

The air carried the scent of damp earth and emerging blossoms, the quiet whisper of trees swaying in the light breeze.

I walked towards downtown Fort Collins without an agenda, letting the rhythm of my steps guide me, each one an anchor against the sheer madness of our times—political instability, economic freefall, the dizzying acceleration of artificial intelligence shaping our world in ways that feel increasingly foreign.

We are living through a profound shift, an era where the tectonic plates of civilization are grinding against each other, birthing uncertainty at a scale we’ve never experienced.

And yet, as I moved through the landscape, something ancient and steady coursed through me. The Tao reminds us that nature does not resist transformation—it bends, it flows, it allows.

What was I resisting? What parts of me were rigid where they needed to be fluid?

I thought about the artist Michelangelo. A man handed seemingly impossible tasks—chisel a colossus from a flawed slab of marble, paint the heavens across a cavernous ceiling, commit years of his life to the will of patrons who had no concept of the suffering required to achieve greatness.

His brilliance came not from mere talent, but from his ability to surrender into the work, to merge with it. When asked about his sculptures, he famously said he was not creating, but revealing—the figure was always within the stone, waiting to be freed.

Wasn’t life the same? Weren’t we all standing before our own slabs of marble, attempting to carve out a version of ourselves that was authentic, that could withstand the pressures of a world demanding conformity?

Michelangelo’s freedom came not from escaping impossible challenges, but from committing to them. What, then, am I unwilling to commit to because it seems too vast, too undefined, too difficult?

As I walked, my mind drifted to the I Ching, the great Book of Changes. The hexagrams teach that life is not a linear path but a series of transformations, one phase dissolving into another, over and over.

The finite game—the one most people play—is about seeking fixed outcomes, about winning in the short term. But the infinite game is about enduring, about remaining in the dance long enough to become something greater.

Am I playing the infinite game?

This walk, this seemingly simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, reminded me of something essential — No matter how unstable the external world becomes, we still hold the power to shape our own internal landscapes. The world can be on fire, yet a centered mind remains unshaken.

I have spent years chasing stability in a world that refuses to provide it. I have learned the hard way that if I am not rooted in something deeper—something beyond markets, headlines, and the manufactured urgency of modern life—I become unmoored, susceptible to the fear and frenzy infecting those around me.

But here’s the paradox: Being grounded is not about resisting change. It’s about making peace with it.

We are not meant to cling to fixed identities. The Tao teaches that those who are rigid will break, while those who yield will endure. My walk was a reminder that recalibration is not a one-time event. It is a daily practice.

It is a commitment, just as Michelangelo committed to revealing the masterpiece within the stone. The world is trying to carve us into something it finds useful. But do we have the courage to take the chisel into our own hands?

Fort Collins in the spring is a reminder that nothing stays frozen forever. Life is movement. The key is to move with intention. To ground oneself, not in fleeting external markers of security, but in an unwavering internal compass.

I am still learning. Still sculpting. Still walking my way toward something unseen.

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Diamond- Michael Scott — aka The Chocolate Taoist