Life is Like a Video Game

Ever notice how identical life is to a video game?
Every person takes on the role of a particular character who has certain powers, while lacking
others; always facing a host of obstacles as they attempt to rise from level to level.
Every character has base attributes, and many more that can be acquired along the way, through
learning, experience, and gaining possession of precious items.
As in life, your power is regenerative, and every action comes with a consequence – to
gain points, one must first give or spend their energies or belongings.
You can accumulate strength, health, power, weapons, and tools to meet your challenges.
Each level reveals your areas of weakness, forcing you to be relentless in ameliorating
the pursuit of your goals.
At different points in the game, as in life, we can find miraculous boosting power, or
face obstacles that appear ultra-resistant.
There’s always a geolocator map available for you to pinpoint where you are and where
you’ve been, thereby guiding you as to where to go.
To play the game, and live a life, you are obliged to pursue certain objectives where
you have the defining role.
Each level can only be passed after a series of grueling tests, always culminating with
the hardest challenge right before being elevated to the next level.
Your adversary usually ends up being something very different than you – something you’ve
never seen before and yet you are somehow simultaneously adequately and inadequately
prepared to battle with.
You can get help from fellow friends who can join you in overcoming your obstacles, or
end up posing a direct threat.
Either way you have to choose wisely who to associate with.
In both life and the game there is always an option to cheat or use shortcuts, but those
that do are winners in name only, not in reality, and they eventually get exposed as frauds.
Even skilled players sometimes find themselves lost or spinning around looking for some opening,
making it easy to feel as though the game itself is somehow against us.
But it’s usually those that persist that find the secret door or pathway to safety
and onward to the next level.
There are a few major differences though between life and video games: in life there is no redo,
and ’game over’ means the total end, not game restart.
Most importantly though, we don’t choose to enter the game, but already find ourselves
within it; and neither do we really choose when it ends.
But how about the game itself, do we get to choose the type of game we’re playing?
Can we switch paradigms to find an environment that best suits our powers, or are we stuck
with the game, the players and the obstacles that we inherit?
Is life really like a video game, a preprogrammed algorithm we mechanistically follow?
Or do our actions create the artificially intelligent program we’re continually engaging
with?
It’s only in playing the game, by seeking, by attempting to surpass our own limitations,
and by never stopping in our pursuit of life’s promises to be found at the end of every level
that we can discover and reveal the game’s essence.

Life is Like a Video Game

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