The games people play

A thought occured to me while I was putting in my new floors. This blog. When I posted my first, I was ranting, it was for me and I was standing on a little soapbox to rant. No game there. Then I got two replies and an email where I believed I was being attacked, and I vollied back. No real game there. But somewhere between there and realizing that I was fighting more for the sake of fighting, I started playing games. I started following rules of engagement. I'd only pick up the little verbal dodgeballs of phrases thrown at me to throw back. To make matters worse, I would only using those balls when I could still throw them back with a kind of self-righteous impunity.
And when I was out and out wrong, (throwing a medicine ball that could not be thrown back easily) I called a time out, I went got back that ball that was intended to smack Luthien right in the face and called foul on myself. I took the ball out of play, and did it so specifically so I would look at myself as a better person for it. How is that not a game?
I AM one of those people that say 'I hate the games people play'. How did I miss it in myself?
Is it possible to see a game for a game, when the game disguises itself as real life? Is it possible to say to oneself "Whoa, I'm serving my own interest here, and by doing so, not doing the right thing by others involved"? How do you gracefully bow out, when in the heat of life, to say "I've started playing a game with you, that is not right or fair to you" and not still be playing? Wouldn't that be a strategic withdrawl? I'm confused as to where the line is.
Is it possible to lead a regular life, not play head games with those people who are in that 'regular life'?
Then there is the flip side of the coin. When someone is playing a game with you, how can you distinguish a game from honesty?
Brandon (sorry for using you as reference) thought I was playing a game in my first post. I wasn't. But by my second post I was. I must have been, by then I was using my rules of engagement. But if I didn't know I was playing a game at the time, then who's to say when it became a game? If the person playing games doesn't know it to be a game, when it is....arrg, it's just so confusing and circular. A great big catch-22.
Is there an easy way to recognize and stop playing games? If there is, is it the right thing to do? The only people I can think of that wouldn't play games are people like Ghandi, Mother Theresa, and the Dali Lama. They each give/gave selflessly but they lead/led very solitary lives. Public but on the whole, solitary. Maybe there's the answer. To not play games, you can't get or be close to people. You can do for people, you can love people, but you must remain apart from people. Maybe to be a part of (community, family, friends) you resign yourself to a game from time to time, and keep the hope that there isn't too much collateral damage.
The thought strikes me as sad, but I don't see any other easy answer.