We all have one movie that bring me painful memories, that one movie we will never watch again, or even mention.
My painful movie was ‘Chicken Little’.
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Unfairness
It’s like raiding in World of Warcraft. You pot your flasks, you have the best gems and enchants for your gear, you prepare your raiding food and potions, you spend hours going through theory craft of your class and practising your rotation on the training dummy. During the boss encounter, you end up one of the top few in DPS/healing meters, the boss finally goes down, and then the system gives the boss’s loot you want to the player who does not really care, hardly logins, and is at the bottom of the DPS/healing meters.
You comfort yourself, telling yourself that there is always the next week. The next week when you down the boss, you didn’t get the loot. And it happened again the week after, and after, and after. And you start asking if the random number generator has anything against you.
It is the same with life. The person who does not deserve it, tends to get the things you wanted, the things you worked hard for. And gets it again, and again, and again. And you ask if life has anything against you, if life is biased, if life is blind.
You have doubts, questioning what is the point of working so hard when those scumbags get things that you worked so hard for, without even trying.
The unfairness of it all. In game. And in life.
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Gamification of Life
I first wrote about life being a game way back in Jan 2008, and it seems recently the world is buzzing with this now. It is called ‘gamification‘, “where it is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems.”
Since the beginning of this year, I have started to add a little gamification to my life, starting with my finances. Based on my years as a gamer, games programmer and knowing exactly what motivates and drives me, I have devised a gamification tool for my finances. The ultimate goal (or end game, in the terminology of games), of course, is to achieve financial freedom so I can quit this worst game ever called ‘LIFE’.
And so far, it is going pretty well.
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Famous Failures
Something about failures to remind myself every time I fail:
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The Grandmasters
I wish I could blog in Chinese instead of going through this tedious way.
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Letting Go
Many years ago, I came across this story of two monks. It goes like this:
An old monk and a young monk were traveling together. They came to this river where the water was flowing very swiftly. There was a very pretty lady standing beside it. The lady asked the two monks if they could carry her on their back to cross the river. The young monk who thought that it was totally inappropriate to touch the lady wanted to turn her down. But the old monk smiled cheerfully and offered to carry her.
So the old monk carried the lady on his back and cross the river. Once they crossed the river, the lady offered her thanks, went her separate way, and the two monk continued their journey. As they walked, the young monk was furious. He was wondering how could the old monk, who was such a religious person, who chant many times a day, could even allow himself to touch the lady. The more he thought about it, the more furious he was. After a while, he couldn’t control himself any longer and reprimanded the old monk.
“How you could allow yourself, a religious man, to touch a woman and even carry her on your back?”, the young man demanded.
The old monk blinked, and looked astonished. “Which woman are you referring to?”, he asked.
The young monk grew even more angry, how could he pretend nothing had happened? “The one at the river!”, he almost shouted.
The old monk smiled, “Oh that lady! I have already let her off my back and forgotten about her. It seems you are the one still carrying her on your back.”
While the story has to do with Buddhism teaching, I believe the moral of the story applies to everyone. I believe it is only when we allow ourselves to forgive, we will be able to accept what happened, and that is when we can truly move on and embrace fully what life has to offer. If we try to move on with the burden of the past on our backs, eventually it will weigh us down, it becomes tiring, we cannot fully appreciate what life has to offer as we are constantly conscious of this burden on our backs.
There are many incidents that happened in my life, and I was furious and hurt at the people responsible when it happened. Some of them, well I have forgiven them, and as for the rest, I am working towards it. There are a couple that I thought I had let go, thought that I have moved on, but in reality, I was still very much carrying it on my back.
It is when I no longer carry anything on my back, that I can move forward and fully embrace my life.
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Life Game
Just watched ‘Wreck-It Ralph‘.
It is a pretty good movie, based on the plot of someone who is sick of being who he is, and wants to be something that he isn’t. The references to the video and arcade games are plenty, and it clearly mirrors life. At the end of the movie, it got me thinking, which I usually do after watching good movies. Perhaps I should be not worry too much about being someone whom I am not, perhaps I should just be me, and not worried how everyone else perceived me.
Like Wreck-It Ralph said, ‘Because if that little kid likes me, how bad can I be?” As long as someone out there likes me, isn’t that enough?
Shakespeare said, ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ Well I think life is but a game, and we are just the characters in this game called ‘Life Game’.
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Two Threads
Our lives are like two threads interwoven together, yet we walk separate paths.
We know each other so well, we are on the same wavelength, we know the likes, dislikes of the other, lines of conversations spoken just with one glance, we could talk anything under the sun for as long as we wanted. Yet we walk separate paths.
Is this fate? Is this destiny?
Two threads of lives, tightly interwoven together.
Yet we walk separate paths.
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Penance
penance – voluntary self-punishment to atone for a sin, crime, etc
It was a subplot in the series ‘Elementary‘, and it seems Sherlock had a drug addiction because he wanted to numb himself from all other feelings, due to something that happened back in London. Sherlock said ‘You always know it, Watson. If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be penance.’
And I can totally relate to that.
I looked back at my life and during the major down points, I always blame myself for the state of things. I may not acknowledge what I did thereafter was penance, but deep down, subconsciously, I always know.
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The Best Rewards
Acts of kindness performed, not expecting any reward, compensation, praise, acknowledgement or good karma. Acts of kindness done because you want to, and most of the time, feeling good afterwards is the reward itself.
In the few rare instances, when people are happy as a result of your act, their happiness are multiple tenfold within you. The joy you feel, the spring in your steps, the rose-tinted world view, the smile on your face, all these will remain for a very long time. These are the best rewards.
