게임 끝 (Game over)
When you hear or read the word "Game Over", what comes to your mind? For me, words like failure, defeat, the end, loss, were the first things that popped up in my head.
That's what it felt like when life gave me a Game Over right before my finals with a fractured knee. It's not like the past few months were sunshine and rainbows. To an already suffocated and distressed me, came this unexpected pause. A pause that was painful and lonely, ruining all the plans I had made.
Lying on the bed in frustration, not able to move because of my fractured leg was very frustrating and depressing. Every day, I woke up, the words Game Over would flash in my eyes, reminding me of my defeat. One day, I decided to download a game and distract myself from my misery. I used to love playing Crash Team Racing on PS1 with my brother. I downloaded Kart Rider. It seemed quite captivating and fun in one of the "Going Seventeen" episodes I watched.
The first race I lost, the second race I came third and the third race I came first. I couldn't believe that I came first on my third try. My heart was beating really fast. The next race I lost, but it was still fun. I wanted to try again. At that moment, I realized that the word Game Over which flashed every time the race ended, no matter if I won or lost, made me try again. I didn't lose hope or feel defeated in those moments. I wanted to try again, to start over and compete.
That's when someone I respect and look upon, a unique individual, that person's words about how Life is a Game come to my mind. He lived by this philosophy, it made living much more fun and less tiring. From what I understood, if we take Life as a Game, then every Game Over is an opportunity to try again. With each win we gain some points and an upgrade, and with every upgrade, for ourselves, our problems and challenges also get an upgrade. Over time and with practice, we learn to overcome those upgraded challenges and level up.
We have races we win and races we lose. We can be team players and also have some solo plays. And some day we reach the final destination having completed the game.
With this Game Over that I got, since it's my first time at this level I'm struggling. But with practice and skill training I can win this race and move on to the next level. To be honest, whatever happened these past few months never made sense to me and I couldn't process it with the view of life I had. This new perspective may work for me or maybe not. I'll only know after some time has passed, but it did help in understanding the situation I am in right now. Hope you can overcome your Game Over and level up!
Fighting 💖!! Untill Next Time!!
As friends to a very special person who had to say 안녕 to finals and leave for home all of a sudden, a whole lot of us were really scared that the continuous series of unfortunate events might bring her down and make her shrink in or worse, blow up into oblivion. We didn't know how to encourage nor how to enquire without hitting any nerves we wouldn't know of since everything was happening beyond our purview.
ReplyDeleteSince we were also forced to run on without stopping for our friend who had to slow down, we had to deal with the fact that we could only encourage her from a place without a direct view of what was happening. We were all filled with misplaced guilt and untitled anger at the fates for doing this to her and not enabling us to be able to help any better. All I could do was suggest the people who saved me and check up on her and her journey. It's great to hear that you healed yourself, and kept yourself open to being helped. It's really commendable to be able to speak away your emotions and to figure them out, much less do it so articulately. I hope your trials bloom into successes and accomplishments! I'm really proud of you, writer frenn!