Day Four: Bringing Vision to Reality.

There’s one thing I really want to talk about from this day, and that is StarPower. This was my “ah-hah!� moment. It was a “simulation,� as they loved to call it, of real life and power. It started off as an innocent game of poker chip trading. We’d have some chips in our pocket, and each color was worth a different value. We’d walk around the room and make trades, but the only way you could do this is if you were clasping hands with the other person. Right off the bat, some people cheated by trading different chips than they had promised. Actually, it wasn’t cheating, it was completely following the rules, it just...wasn't fair. You didn’t know who you could trust. Hmm...sounds like life, doesn’t it?

After round one, they split us into 3 “classes� if you will, with the top class having gotten the most points, etc. I was in the top group. There weren’t very many of us, but we immediately formed a loyalty and decided to stick together (the other groups did the same). They then gave us 3 bonus chips, worth 3 points each, that we had to distribute amongst our group. This meant some people would miss out and inevitably be moved to a different class. After we did this, some people were moved up because they had more points, replacing some people within our group. We continued like this, more trading, more cheating, more shutting out other people because they weren’t from the “top� group, etc. At the last round, due to the bonus chip distribution, I got moved down to the middle group. I was bitter and devastated and reacted terribly. I couldn’t even concentrate on the rest of the game.

It wasn’t until the reaction that I saw the silliness of it all. People from the top group said everyone in the bottom group was lazy, people in the bottom group said everyone in the top group was a power-hungry cheater. This offended many. I had not cheated.

I really took a step back and saw how I reacted, and was shocked. I had gotten this emotional over power and being on top? Was this who I would be in the real world? More concerned with my high status and control than the people around me?

After this activity, there were tears and anger from many, until we got with our family clusters and really talked about what we had learned from the experience. A valuable yet painful lesson about ourselves and others.