When I was a kid one of my favorite games to play outside was Red Light, Green Light, 1-2-3. 

A bunch of us from the neighborhood would meet up in the court behind my house or in someone’s driveway. We’d choose one person to be the traffic cop while the rest of us went to the designated starting line which was either drawn in chalk on the asphalt or, as was the case in my gravel driveway, drawn with a stick in the dirt.

When the cop yelled, “Green light,” we all ran forward. When the cop yelled, “Red light,” we all had to immediately freeze. Anyone caught moving on “red light” was sent back to the starting line.

This continued until someone reached the traffic cop first. The kid who reached the traffic cop first won the game. The prize, of course, was being the next traffic cop.

I got to thinking about Red Light Green Light 1-2-3 today after listening to the first chapter in Earl Nightingale’s book, The Essence of Success. 

In it, Earl states:

“All the lights are never green all at the same time.”

The context of this quote is Earl’s conversation about attitude, namely what kind of attitude we choose to have each day.

Do we choose to be cheerful, optimistic, and expect good things to happen?

Or do we choose to be sour, pessimistic, allowing the endless stream of negativity on the nightly news to harden us toward ourselves, each other, and this thing called life?

What attitude you bring to a game like Red Light Green Light will color your entire experience. Sometimes the light is green and you’re moving forward toward the end goal. You can practically taste the sweetness of victory of becoming the traffic cop.

Sometimes the light is red and you have to stop mid-stream which, depending on when the traffic cop issues her command, you can be in a most awkward position that practically guarantees she’s going to see you move because you can’t hold that pose for more than two seconds.

“All the lights are never green all at the same time.”

Red Light Green Light 1-2-3

Childhood games like Red Light Green Light 1-2-3 play an early role in teaching us about the power of attitude. 

They also teach several other important life lessons. 

Lesson #1

First, there’s the lesson about trusting authority. Did the traffic cop really see you moving or did she claim to have seen your left pinky finger twitch because the two of you had a tiff earlier over who was cuter, Shaun or David Cassidy?

 Are you going to challenge her if she says she saw you moving and if so, how will you build your case? Will you ask for witnesses to come forward to defend your claim, calling out her prejudice? How much did her David Cassidy bias influence her decision to send you back to the starting line? 

If the weird kid from up the street who normally didn’t play with the usual group was there, would the traffic cop single him out, sending a subtle tribal message that says, “You don’t belong here,” a message everyone understands long before he does? 

And what about outright playing favorites? Even as kids we are aware of the hierarchies inherent in any group. Age, size, personality style, holiday haul, parental status all factor into who is in and who is not.

Lesson #2

Second, the lesson about what happens when you follow the rules to the letter -- and what happens when you don’t -- is front and center. What you can get away with and when? How far can you push the envelope? What tactics can you employ to stack the odds in your favor of not getting caught even when you’re blatantly breaking the rules?

I can distinctly remember times when I played the traffic cop and said I didn’t see someone move (usually one of the boys I happened to have a crush on that day) even when I -- and everyone else -- did. He’d followed the rules of the game, moving ahead toward me, but I was not playing by them. Conversely, there were times when I knew at the deepest level of my childhood knowing that I had followed every rule of the game, I hadn’t moved, not even breathing, and still found myself back at the starting line.

Lesson #3

Finally, Red Light Green Light 1-2-3 teaches you that all the lights are never green all of the time. Literally. We can’t be in forward motion 24/7. We can’t do all the things no matter how much we say we want to. FOMO is real, but JOMO is better. I think this lesson is especially important given today’s social conditions. Discussions about burnout are at an all-time high. Millions of people are questioning what’s truly important to them -- and what’s not -- in a post-covid world.

Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves and the people we love is to play the traffic cop. Call out “Red light!” on ourselves. Send ourselves back to the starting line where the game can begin again and we, as players, can play it with a renewed attitude, genuine love for what we’re doing, and gratitude for being able to play the game in the first place.

All the lights are never green all at the same time but we don’t need them to be. 

When enough of them are green? 

We get to play.