The Journey

I am really terrible at video games. Aside from the original Nintendo, which I received for my 8th birthday and played obsessively until the night it was stolen from my family’s townhouse home, maybe 6 months later, I have had very little experience in playing video games. These days, they have these fancy controllers with all kinds of buttons, toggle switches, and knobs. It’s a complicated piece of machinery. A far cry from the flat little controller that came with my original nintendo with it’s measly 6 flat buttons.

I recently had a wild hair that maybe I would like to try playing some of these new-fangled (yeah, I said it) video games.The graphics are so fresh and exciting, and there’s so much more you can do besides walk forward in a strictly-linear fashion through a flat two-dimensional world, jump on mushrooms, and squat down into mystery sewer tunnels. I expressed my interest to an avid gamer friend of mine, and she decided to loan me her “spare” PlayStation so I could give it a go…

What follows that last statement is knee-slapping laughter. That, and a boat-load of curse words. The laughter would be coming from anyone who’s ever held or operarated a modern day controller, and the cursing would be coming from me.

My attempts at maneuvering myself through the foreign and oftentimes terrifying world of TombRaider as the skillfull and inventive Lara Croft look something more like a drunken townsmen barreling his way through the city square after being kicked out of the only pub left that will serve him only to find himself affronted with a stone building corner, or worse the decorative statue of the city’s founder in the middle of the square, and rendered utterly incapable of deciphering his bearings or navigating his way around it, much less finding his way home. In fact, even this description makes my gaming attempts sound more graceful than they are. I routinely find myself stuck in corners, unable to discern how I got there, where I came from, or where the hell I should be going. I meander (no, stumble) through woods and abandoned buildings trying to figure out what the hell I’m actually looking for or what the objective of this whole game really is in the first place. I rant and rave to anyone within earshot about how nice it would be if someone would just provide a simple guidebook to the game–ya know, a little back story: a little information on who the hell I’m supposed to be, where I am, what I’m doing there, and what I should be trying to achieve in this whole god forsaken game!

But no. Instead, it feels as if there’s this whole world of video gamers who already have this knowledge and have no need for a silly guidebook. They already know who they are. They know where they’re going. And they seem to have some hidden knowledge about just how to do it. They make it look supremely easy, and even fun.

Lately, it occurs to me that my video game experience is not unlike my real life experience. I have often found myself in some sort of proverbial corner, baffled as to how or why I have become trapped in a space that is open on two sides! Not to mention, embarrassed at my clumsy attempts to maneuver myself through this place called “life.” It often feels overwhelming and I find myself reduced to cursing and feeling sorry for myself. Once again, I think, would it really be so much to ask for just a little guidebook–something to sort of highlight the main points and offer the most rudimentary direction?? Meanwhile, there are others who seem to “get” the whole game of life and progress right on through it with ease and adept strategy. At least, that’s how it looks from the outside.

A few years back, I was ready to quit the game altogether. I couldn’t see the point anymore in this endless, fruitless search for…for I didn’t even know what. I just knew something was missing. There had to be more. All my efforts led only to frustration, and I thought there had to be a better way. Shortly after that, the teachers and guidebook I would need to begin successfully navigating this life mysteriously and miraculously began to appear in my world. Since then, I’ve actually begun to acquire the tools, and cultivate the skills, that have helped me to become much more proficient at living. I know that may sound funny in a way, but at it’s most basic level, that is the truth.

Nevertheless, I still feel like a drunk Lara Croft stumbling over rocks and winding up in corners…all.the.time. I find myself wondering, “Which way do I go?” and “Where am I even trying to get to in the first place??” It seems like I am endlessly seeking direction.

These days, I do feel like I have a guidebook and a bit of backstory and it has brought me more peace than I ever could have imagined. A Course In Miracles is what I use as my personal guidebook, and the teachers who have come into my life have helped me to navigate the finer points of manuevering through this life. The only thing is, I have to remember to use the tools and skills I have acquired or else I find myself right back in a corner, or stuck behind a damn tree. You would think that after years of barreling blindly along, I would be so relieved to finally have some supplies to work with that I would grab onto each tool I found and never look back. But the truth is, it takes a lot of practice to learn how to wield those tools effectively; and even more challenging than that, it takes a great deal of practice to remember to use these new tools at all. In reality, we are so accustomed to our old ways of walking around blindly in the dark that we have a tendency to go back to doing that, even after we’ve found a flashlight, only because the blindness is so familiar. And more often than not, familiarity equals comfortability. I am told by those who seem to know that this is not a failure, just a learning and growing experience. In fact, it seems altogether necessary.

I still wind up in corners, trying to walk through them, and finding myself frustrated that I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing. But now, my go-to resources when this happens are Prayer (sitting quietly and directing my mind towards God), Forgiveness (taking responsibility for putting myself in that damn corner and choosing to see it differently/take a different direction), and Seeking Counsel from the teachers who have proven themselves worthy of my trust through sound guidance and consistent teachings (this includes the sage voice of Jesus in the Course). Without these things, I don’t care to think about where I would have ended up in my own personal game-of-life, and now I don’t have to. I have been given the guidebook to this “game” and the most fundamental tools to navigate my way through it with the ultimate goal of discovering my inherent right to Peace and Joy. The key is to remember to use them.