Come As You Are: Season 2 Episode 7

LOVECATS! Hello!! I hope you are well 😊

I miss being in this space as often as I was, but I do feel like I’m in a bit of a contemplative space, floating between now and what’s to come.

I’m not mad about it though, aside from the fact that I don’t feel like doing much, I’m trying to trust my intuition and my instincts and just stay with it for now, waiting for a moment to see what happens next.

However, if I take into consideration the fact that it’s still winter (even though it’s gloriously warm here), then it would make sense that rest or resting, rather than working just to work, would still be the most natural thing to do right now. And, in retrospect, when I compare where I am now, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, to where I was last year at this time, it’s clear how much work I have done and how much progress I have made.

The fact that I can sit in calmness and peace without fear, anxiety or worry, is progress in and of itself and maybe I need a little time to just revel in that.

I won’t go into too much more, because I spoke a lot about it all in the video and at length, but (as referenced in the video) here’s what I found in my notes app about leveling up, using a video game’s levels as a metaphor for life…

I thought about a video game reference, and I’ll use an easy one, like Super Mario Bros to make my point; when you start the game, you have no idea how to play it. You figure out the controls on the controller; walk, run, jump, up, down, etc. and then start the game with 3 lives… the game begins, DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO… and you’re off and running!

And then almost immediately, you quite literally run into something (a mushroom) that kills you. It takes your first life, and now you only have 2 lives left, but you’ve learned a little bit… you now know that you can’t run into whatever it was that killed you, so you start the game over and this time you don’t run so fast, and when you get near the death threat, you try to jump over it, and when you land on its head accidentally, you learn that you can kill it before it kills you… so with your new skills, you keep going and then you get the flower and it makes you BIG and able to run faster and jump higher, and now you’ve leveled up again, but then you run right into something that takes you back down a size, back to your little self, and then you accidentally fall off the screen and die again. Now you only have one life left to make it to the end of the level, which of course will never do and you’ll have to die again and start over from the beginning each time just to get a little further along in the game.

But NOW you have gained so many new skills simply by playing the game.

You had to START.

You had to try, having no idea what you were doing.

But you did it anyway.

You wouldn’t have learned any of those tactics unless you picked up the controller started the game, died, and then started over again and again and again, each time learning new skills, new tools to get you further along the level, closer to your final destination.

You didn’t care if you looked foolish while learning how to play. And, somehow, even though you were failing, you were having fun while learning how to play.

AND… when you played for the 500th time, gained enough skills to pass the level, you’ve leveled up!

AND… then you start the next level and have a whole new set of things to learn in order to pass it.

AND… you continue this process of starting and failing and starting and failing until you get good and you keep leveling up until you reach the BIG BOSS at the very end, the hardest level of all, where you will die a million deaths before finally defeating him, and then one day you figure it out and you beat it and finish the entire game and you feel VICTORIOUS and celebrate your win…

And maybe you take a break, but eventually, you get a little restless…

AND… then you start a whole new game, from the very beginning, and the entire process of trying and failing begins again: this is life.

But if you never pick up the controller, too afraid of looking silly because you have no idea how to play the game, you never learn and thus, you never level up.

You stay exactly where you are, until you make a choice to do the hard thing, or you settle into the level that made you feel safe once and decide you liked it there, until the end of time.

Sure it’s frustrating, but it’s also fun… and when you look at it on a bigger scale, with the long-game in mind, you know that this is just part of the process, and getting frustrated is part of it too, but quitting is never the answer because if you stop trying, if you stop playing, you most definitely won’t make it to the next level, and you have to ask yourself, did I spend all this time and energy learning knew skills only to stop playing the game before completing it?

AND… then you have to honestly determine whether or not it is worth your time and energy to continue pursuing. But maybe you just don’t like this particular game… maybe another game is more aligned with your personality. Just because you’re not winning doesn’t mean you’re losing. Choosing not to play at all, however, doesn’t even give you a chance to win.

“I didn't come this far to only come this far.”