So instead of studying for my physics exam that's tomorrow, I'm sitting here and thinking about video games. Life's kind of like a huge video game. As you progress, you level up, and your enemies and obstacles simultaneously increase in difficulty. By the end of it, you get good enough to the point where you can handle every battle that gets thrown at you, and your character becomes exceptionally good at at what he does. Then I sat there and thought about all those video games that I started but gave up on because they were too hard or took too long to complete. The result, obviously, is stagnation: every character in a game that I had given up on stayed at the same level, never achieving his full potential.
Life progresses in a similar manner. It's so terribly difficult to better your character and build yourself up, yet it's so easy to fall back to your original state. Back to square one. It's kind of like when the game flashes GAME OVER and asks whether or not you want to try again. Then you get stuck there, and you stay at the same level, sticking to the same old habits and ideals. A very dear teacher of mine once told me, "Internally, you'll be very much the same person you were at 20 when you're 40 years old; unless you act and make serious, conscious decisions about how you will better yourself, you're going to stay the same." Of course, this is much, much easier said than done.
Then of course, there are tons of people that'll tell you that video games are a waste of time. I disagree, of course. I think they're a brilliant form of art and expression, like movies and books. Don't believe me? Go watch a review of the game Bioshock. Speaking of time, we've been given so much time in this life to change ourselves. When we're stuck at that dreaded GAME OVER screen, we always have the option to try again. Yet this is so difficult. Wasting time and staying in your comfort zone is so much easier than going out there and throwing yourself into challenging situations where failure at least once is almost always imminent.
A thought that terrifies me is that, perhaps when I'm dead, I'll be see the person that I could have become: a version of me at my maximum potential achieved.
