Life is NOT a game!

and I'm tired of pretending to play !!

I’ve been taking a lot of walks, waking up early and getting 3 miles in before 9 AM. We’re back in the spring sensation and I pass the same patches of flowers that felt like magical totems during the early days of covid lockdowns. March 2020 was very rainy. I have videos on my phone of walks through puddles, Chris and I caught in a downpour, laughing, our glasses obscured by raindrops. A shot of me in a beige raincoat under night blooming jasmine. This weekend I went through old photos on my phone, found bare shelves and empty freezer sections from our first venture to try and stock up on goods. It seems the entire town beat us to it. We could barely find cereal. Chris bought vegetables to blanch and freeze while I recorded him, laughing from the couch. We also missed the rush for the paper goods aisle and had to source toilet paper from an office supply website. The giant one-ply spools lasted for months, memorialized by a snapshot of Chris holding an industrial roll by his head for scale (basically the same size). I don’t usually spend time clicking through the camera roll and I was pulled down memory lane, caught off guard by feelings that flooded back from that time.

I know with all my head and heart that I am mentally healthier and miles more centered than back in 2019 or 2020. I’ve found the shape of what makes me feel at peace, a wholeness that wasn’t present back in those photos. Still, I can’t help but see a quality of youth in my face that feels lost, can’t help but wonder if it will ever return.

A surreal quality blanketed our existence during that time and it hasn’t entirely lifted. Like, am I here? I think I am, more than ever. But at the same time I could disappear and very few would bat an eye. 

Life has felt much like a video game the past couple years, because of real limitations on the world we inhabit. You will definitely run into certain walls in the maze and if you fall off the path there might not be a design to catch you. Our mortality became more apparent, it floated around us like a fog.

Questions grew from the collective grief, along with reimagining of the systems that brought us here in the first place. Are we destined to be tired? Or is it part of the design? Who put this game together in the first place? Why even play the game if it’s rigged?

I’m not saying we should quit living—let’s divorce the idea of playing the game from the concept of embodying time here on earth. Living is not synonymous with taking part in the game. So much has been gamified—complete with little dopamine rewards—it’s far too easy to forget the distinctions. Once those are gone, we lose touch with how one can enjoy life beyond the looming larger structures.

At its core, living is synonymous only with being here, being present, creating and expressing and processing on your individual terms. Living is being one with your own rhythms, wherever they go. If we’re lucky, we do this all while keeping the knowledge that whatever beat you’re on, it is one of many in this lifetime. 

I suppose I’m fed up with the gamified life. Lately I’ve been asking myself: what are the little spaces that can be expanded to encompass more living, without any of the game? I could (and do) cry when I look at my sleeping dog. I wake up in the morning and stare at the same abstract shelf unit. I watch my boyfriend sleeping on the couch and try to memorize his face, despite my silly prosopagnosia. I make tea and sometimes soup. I drive out to the ocean just to catch the last minute of the sunset. 

If this sounds boring, it’s not. It doesn’t make for a great narrative, but living doesn’t require a narrative. Figuring this out has taken me years—when you spend most of your life treading water, it helps to have a story supporting you. Every once in a while, the lighting shifts, perspective flips, suddenly revealing the story is actually chasing you. It’s the narrative that has boxed you in, made you sustain it with your racing heart and tear stained pillow cases. 

When you cut out the noise, it can be strange to find your heart beating at a regular pace. If I’m not running somewhere, carrying someone or containing something, what’s my purpose and how do I find fuel? 

Without frequent surges of adrenaline, adjustments must be made in our understanding of who we are. It’s hard to admit when we have a dependence on something, even if it’s a story in our head.

The U.S. is hooked on narrative. Its many stories contradict one another, but the overwhelming theme is one of innovation. It wants to be the source of new ideas, development at lightening speed. There is a blind faith that direction towards something is by default good. We’re obsessed with progress because it must be positive. Whatever is created might further human existence. Yet the more that is created, the more we have to figure out. A lot of fundamentals have been left behind, in the hopes that big solutions will one day come to clean up the mess. The quality of ease found in doing nothing can’t be replicated, no matter how much innovation occurs.

Growing up in LA, in the center of where lots of culture is made that is then passed across the world, I believed the innovation myth. I bought the story. But the further along the world comes, the more I wonder where we’re going and why we’re going there? 

Does inspiration live around every corner? Or perhaps a lot of things exist for the sake of existing? Do we have to turn everything into something else? Where is there space to just be? And how can I let that expand?

Even if there’s no story to tell about it.

xx
James