The Oldest Victory is Not Winning

Not the oldest board game, nor the oldest sport with written rules. The oldest game—the one humans played before they had language for strategy or victory.

It’s the game of tag. La Mancha in Argentina. El Pilla, pilla in Spain. Chat Perché in France. Acchiapparella in Italy. Tag in English.

And the best part? You can’t win. You can only avoid holding it for too long. And when you have it, you pass it on.

No trophies. No rankings. Just the oldest pact of the game: keep moving or you’ll get caught.

Take a breath. If you feel like it...

‍

The game of tag appears in over 90 cultures, without a single origin story. It evolved separately, everywhere, because it connects with something we already understood. Predator and prey. Chase and evade. The body’s oldest choice—fight or flight—turned into a game.

Tag operates in a simple loop:

• One person chases
• Everyone else evades
• Contact switches roles
  

No elimination. No accumulation. The game continues as long as there’s movement. The moment you try to end it, you stop playing.

This is the logic of rotation, not the logic of conquest.

Take a breath.

‍

Global variants demonstrate convergence:

• Kabaddi (India): breath-holding raids, over 4,000 years old
• Kho-Kho (India and Pakistan): seated hunters, crouching evasion
• Ampe (Ghana): clapping signals replace tagging
• Bullrush (Australia): mass charge, no safe zones
• Berek (Poland): lightning tag with temporary sanctuaries
• Different rules. Same architecture. The hunter becomes the hunted.

Tag is played in playgrounds, streets, and fields all over the world. The language changes. The hand signals change. What doesn’t change is the moment when children realize they can’t “win” by standing still.

‍

We don’t usually talk about evasion as a skill.

We talk about determination. Execution. Persistence. We frame the founder’s journey as a hunt: finding product-market fit, capturing attention, dominating a niche.

Tag trains the same ability that rough-and-tumble play trains in mammals: how to handle a threat without freezing or fighting.

Wolves don’t chase to kill when they play. They chase to gauge. Chimpanzees fight to learn restraint. Children play tag to practice making decisions while being chased.

This isn’t shirking or evasion. It’s choice under pressure.

Take a breath.

‍

At Ló&co, we approach evasion from three angles:

• Identify what’s really chasing you, not the pressure you imagine
• Define your actual territory of movement—where you have space and where you’re cornered
• Practice “tag,” just like in the game.

It’s not a metaphor. It’s spatial strategy.

‍

Somewhere between playing in the schoolyard and adulthood, we learned a new set of rules:

• Games need scores
• Work needs metrics
• Progress needs proof

And we lost the essence of Tag—the comfort of not mattering too much. In Tag, you chase the others for a few minutes. Then it’s someone else’s turn. No one keeps score. The role isn’t permanent.

In business, we hold onto roles until we burn out. We confuse endurance with strategy. We treat rest as failure or a waste of time instead of rotation.

Take a breath.

‍

When adults want to play, we build rooms with exits. Escape rooms have acceptable pressure—timed, bounded, solvable. You’re allowed to feel chased as long as there’s a door at the end. That’s the deal.

What we don’t allow ourselves is the oldest game of all—the one with no finish line, where the pressure shifts, roles change, and relief comes not from escaping but from staying in motion.

Tag works because everyone agrees on the same rules: show up, start running, take turns chasing, and the game stops when your mom calls you for a snack. No one wins, no one loses.

My methodology isn’t for people who need to win. It’s for companies and entrepreneurs who recognize that the game is about staying in motion, and that sometimes the smartest move is to pass the pressure on before it crushes you.

Tag doesn’t make big promises. Just keep moving—that’s how business really works.

Until next time!

‍That’s all!!!!!

Myriam