I was
going to write about truth this week, but I gathered some new inspiration while
listening to Where the Streets Have No Name by U2 and playing a single game of
Solitaire...which it just so happens I won.
I was
considering life. I do that a lot, I
guess. Life isn’t a game. Some people like to say it is, but in truth
it’s only a tutorial. Every step of the
way you are learning, the tutorial is teaching you things you didn’t know
before. It teaches you how to play a
game that you will never play. You never
have to. You take what you learn and you
add on to it and by the end you either know everything or you’ve tried playing
without finishing the tutorial. There
are people that don't finish. Where does that get
them? Some jump off bridges, others hang
themselves from the ceiling, and others suffer for the rest of their lives
because they’ve learned a little, but not enough. If you’ve got no idea how to play the game,
why try?
Something
else about a tutorial: You can’t lose.
It tells you everything you need to do.
It guides you every step of the way.
When you screw up, it puts you back on the right path. You can’t really lose a tutorial; you can
only choose to not finish it. Now,
sometimes the system crashes and you’re out of luck (car crashes, other
accidents, etc. are what I’m getting at if you didn’t get the metaphor). But don’t quit the tutorial. You may say “Aw hell no, life doesn’t tell me
what to do!” but it does. The directions
are at the top of your screen, you just have to see them. They’re right in front of your eyes! You really have to try to lose. Way too many of
us are trying to lose. We’re trying to
play the game without the tutorial. Granted, it may be an incredibly difficult game we're learning to play, but remember, it really is just the tutorial.
In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale is trying
way too hard to lose. Finally he sees
the directions that life has been trying to show him for seven long years. I’m fairly certain he died satisfied.
Life is
not a game; it is merely the tutorial.
Take the opportunity to learn, strive to understand, and most of all,
enjoy all of the simplicity and complexity that is life.
I like your analogy of how life is a tutorial, not a game. But why would you play a tutorial if you didn't get to play the game? Most times, if you skip the tutorial, you'll learn just as much throughout the game, maybe more (like cheats that the tutorial won't tell you for obvious reasons). You learn through trial and error, granted, but at least you get to play. But really interesting viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE "Where the Streets Have No Name"!! :D But anyways, I thought this, as always, was a really interesting philosophy on life: that we should listen to our hearts to guide us to do the right thing, and though we may think that what they're telling us is wrong, it always ends up being for our benefit.
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