A detail shot of an ellaborate door motif near Notre Dame in Paris, September 2008
Anyone who has known me for the past eleven years has probably heard me say this.
“Life is a video game!” has become my battle cry.
This started right after I got married. My wife and I received a Playstation for a wedding present, and I purchased Tomb Raider as my first game.
Up until then I’d known myself as the kind of person to set out lofty aspirations and begin the road to accomplish them. After the first few obstacles I would quit in frustration and distract myself with other goals, and the cycle would repeat.
This was how I began playing Tomb Raider. I think I’d made it one third of the way throught the game and got to a place where Laura Croft was getting smashed again and again. I remember throwing the controller down and thinking “I quit!”.
Then I had an epiphany.
The people who designed these games don’t design them so that a person can get one third of the way through just to quit. It is in their interest, in the game publisher’s interest, for users to want to finish the game. So they have built a way to finish the game into it. There is a way there, I just have to find it. If they make it too easy to find, it is not challenging enough, and therefore not fun and compelling, and they sell fewer volumes and get bad reviews and go out of business. So the challenging factor is an important ingredient.
Besides, I remember thinking, if thirteen-year-old boys are playing this game all the way in a weekend, I intend not to be outdone by them.
So I returned to getting Laura Croft killed over and over in Tomb Raider, determined that I was going to finish the game, whatever it takes. And I did! Gradually I was able to learn from the destruction, and to predict the patterns and the best combination of timing and movement.
I went out and purchased Tomb Raider II and played it all the way through, facing it with the same resolve.
Then I looked around at my own life, the challenges and goals and dreams I had as an adult married man. I realized that I could take the lessons I learned from this video game and apply them to my own life, my own career, and reach all those lofty and amazing dreams.
Of course, this probably makes up for my lack of participation in any sports in middle school and high school, where the coaches teach you those same lessons.
But my point is that for any challenge in life, there IS a way to finish it. You might have to try again and again and again, but really you are only uncovering the way to it, similar to how Michelangelo said that he was carving away marble to reveal the sculpture within.
Nonetheless, it has changed my approach to life. So when my friends and family hear me say “life is a video game,” they know I am taking a challenge on with passion and resolve.