video games teaches us this.

it’s never the big burly boss at the end of a level that you have to beat that makes you lose all your guys

it’s the minutiae, the little turtles popping up along your journey, the quick spiders that fall on you, the little bits of lava that you don’t pay that much attention to as you run and jump and swing

PAY ATTENTION TO THE LAVA

video games are trying so hard to teach us how life is and we are always trying to stop kids from playing them. it’s crazy.

no, junior, you cannot play this game on the easy level forever. at some point you need to up the ante. you have to learn new tricks, you have to read the book that came with it AND the books that outsiders wrote. and yes, virginia, in order to win at video games, as with life you have to try new things, alllllll the time.

will you die trying them? yes. but you will also die not trying them.

video games teaches us so much about death. way more than war movies or the bible or classic paintings. if you play Donkey Kong, for example, the average game lasts less than 3 minutes. so basically you are dying once every minute.

even when you “win” at Donkey Kong (level 22), you don’t win, you die 7 seconds into the level because of “an integer overflow in its time/bonus. The game takes the level number a user is on, multiplies it by 10 and adds 40. When you reach level 22, the time/bonus number is 260, which is too large for its 8-bit 256 value register, so it resets itself to 0 and gives the remaining 4 as the time/bonus – which too short to finish the level.”

just like Life, when you have accomplished all the things you have been told you have to achieve, they still figure out a way to kill you.

a valuable lesson that life if fleeting. die with your boots on. and life is about the journey not the destination.

it’s never the hard things that are hard. it’s the getting there.