Five Friends, One Game, Five Realities

The Football Match

I once heard a story about five friends who went to a football match together.

The game was intense — full of energy, tension, and emotion. At one point, a goal was scored. The crowd erupted. It felt like one of those moments that stays with you.

After the match, as they were walking away from the stadium, one of the five friends — who wasn't really a football fan — broke the silence.

He had only come along for the company. He hadn't followed the game closely, and honestly, he didn't care much about football. But he did notice something strange: the atmosphere among his friends felt tense.

So he asked, innocently: "Okay… did we win or lose?"

Silence.

Then came the reactions.

The first friend said: "Yeah, we scored… but the guy who did it could've scored more. He just didn't want to. Like always."

The second jumped in: "Of course we won. Their goalkeeper is a sellout. And honestly, we should've scored even more against him."

The third shook his head: "You guys are blind. Can't you see this is all just for show? None of this is real."

The fourth added: "This goes way deeper. It's all controlled from behind the scenes. We're all just playing along with it — players included."

And then the fifth friend looked at all of them and said: "If we all see it so differently… why did we even come? It sounds like we all decided what we believe before the game even started."

We Don't See Things As They Are

So what's the point of this story?

We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.

Every single one of those friends watched the same match. The same goal. The same ninety minutes. And yet, five completely different realities walked out of that stadium.

Not because the game changed. But because each of them brought their own lens, their own beliefs, their own emotional filters.

This sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Because the same thing happens in meeting rooms. In family dinners. In conversations with the people we love most. Same words spoken, same room, same hour — and somehow, everyone leaves with a different story of what just happened.

Your perspective is not the truth.

It's a truth. Your truth.

And the same goes for everyone else.

The moment we forget that, conversations turn into arguments, and differences turn into divisions. Not because anyone is lying. But because each of us is reporting honestly from inside our own version of the match.

(You might recognize this from an earlier post — the image of the object in the room, with everyone looking at it through a different glass box. This is that same truth, just standing on a different field.)

The Drama We Secretly Want

Here's the uncomfortable part.

Even when we know something will trigger us, even when we know emotions will run high, a part of us still wants it. We go to the "game" anyway. We feed the tension. We replay the stories. We hold onto the drama.

Because, in some strange way, it gives us something. Certainty. Identity. Even a sense of belonging.

The Script We Bring With Us

So what can you actually do about it?

Because here is the honest truth: most of the time, we don't arrive at a conversation empty. We arrive with a script already written. A conclusion already drawn. And then we listen — not to truly hear, but to find confirmation of what we already decided.

Real curiosity looks different. It means asking a question you don't already know the answer to. It means leaving enough space for the other person's reality to actually land — even if it looks nothing like yours.

Next time you find yourself in a heated discussion, or just a strong reaction rising in you, pause for a second. Take a breath. And ask yourself two honest questions:

Am I seeing what actually happened? Or am I seeing my version of it?

And maybe even more importantly: Do I want to understand… or do I just want to be right?

Because sometimes, the biggest difference isn't in what happened. It's in the story we choose to tell about it.

And the moment you remember that everyone in the room came with their own version of the match, the conversation can finally shift:

from defending your truth, to actually getting curious about theirs.

Wishing you a beautiful day.