Well, I survived the worst day of the year this week. School’s back and I must have been asked a hundred times how was my summer. But as happy as I felt waking up a little slower, and resting a bit more often, I feel like my response was never satisfying when asked. When my colleagues asked, they seemed more focused in discussing who had the most unique travel. When my boss asked I felt I was supposed to have done more to progress my teaching career. We didn’t really travel because we are saving for some big things coming up, and I didn’t really write or study because Amy worked summer school and there were family matters to look after and tend to. My oldest son is headed into his last year of high school. There were essays to compose, projects to complete, portfolios to create, and occasionally, there was downtime to cherish. It’s important at least once year to disconnect from the hustle and bustle of the world - all the noise of adults in the news and the traffic and the kids with their videos and games…
My son and I played a video game together called Split Fiction. He thought I’d be interested because the two main characters are women writers who answer an ad and enter a machine that creates a virtual reality from their stories. Something goes wrong and they end up trapped inside the machine by some crazy capitalist who you learn is trying to steal their ideas.
It’s a fairly intuitive game that requires you do crazy tricks like leap onto the tip top of poles like you’re a parkour expert or swing on the vines of a magic tree. It’s designed in such a way that it’s not so hard even though there are shoot outs and bosses and puzzles. The story unfolds so that the women begin to reveal some complex backstory and characterization as they progress by working together. And it rarely repeats. It was a good play. It took some time to finish, but it was a great way for us to connect as we’re both creative types who stress about winning in an effort to merely not let the other down. We joked about the nature of the relationship between the women, and marveled as the different stories revealed similar themes and worlds kept increasing in complexity. We laughed out loud together for real whenever game play sped up and we each began accomplishing tremendous feats on instinct. At one point we got to ride these dragons that we’d found and been protecting. We’d found ways to feed them. They grew and eventually I could fly mine and he could punch and climb things with his. It really was a bit of a thrill. We just finished it the other day and afterwards, we were able to go back and do a couple of the most fun runs again. We switched characters a little bit - me punching and climbing and him and flying and spitting. We realized we were best suited for the roles we’d picked originally. The whole thing was a wonderful share, but the best part was going back and reliving our favorite runs. It’s still a bit intense. You have to demonstrate all those skills you learned, but your goals change and your perspective is different. This round, you can appreciate knowing it was a great part - a bonus level.
I really didn’t connect at all with news this summer. Everyone seems worried about war, the economy, climate change, AI… I’ve been pondering my life’s purpose and whether we manifest reality or not. I’ve found a kind of resilience in just focusing on my own desires and the happiness of my family.
Most of my life I’ve already spent worrying about the future. I mean I really didn’t think we were gonna make it here. I’m still surprised I made it through the 80s. My childhood was peppered with anxiety and depression over early losses and what I deemed inevitable nuclear war. College only furthered my understanding of the precarious nature in humanity’s rise despite a lack of arcane vision. And yet we’ve somehow survived through not one, but two terms of Trump having the football, a global pandemic, and a proxy war with Russia as well as escalation in the Middle East.
I’m just in such a different space in my life. It feels like a different universe. There’s quite a bit of increasing scientific affirmation for Everett‘s Multi World Theory. Reality is looking more and more subjective. But even as the world feels more and more like it’s in fast forward, I feel better equipped to handle even the worst days of the year with ease. This is all starting to feel like a bonus level.
There’s something so awesome about that though! Living life like you’re in a bonus level feeling like it all matters, but also kind of doesn’t, bouncing around obstacles focused more on a love of that buoyancy, the beauty of a challenge and the wish to serve and share. We get a few moments in school this week to talk with colleagues. I was discussing a library I wanted to create with one and we were naming the books we’ve read that our students could and should also access. We ended up discussing The Alchemist which I deem one of the greatest books of all time - but my colleague hated. She was frustrated when she realized the protagonist went through all these journeys and just kind of ended up back where he started. She expressed such authentic frustration at this that I had to laugh.
She didn’t share my metaphorical love of a bonus level experience. I have an aunt I’m in a similar long term conversation with over the ending of the TV series, Lost. We’d both watched and loved the series as it had unfolded and I guess we’d expected to get all the answers to all the mysteries it had initiated, but most were basically left on our laps. She found that frustrating and I found it preserved the dynamic. It just seems like life is and will always be what we make of it. I mean, that’s the reality under all the questions that push us forward and out in all kinds of different directions. They are as different as they are similar and you can push forward into all the circles or get lost in all the eddies but in the end, we really are where we started. For all our rationalizations and justifications, all the learning we acquire, and all the judgments we make, it’s really about our own happiness. It’s really about how buoyant we are we when we bounced in and out of those challenges we set for ourselves. It’s about how happy we make the people around us and whether we brought the best of us, and whether or not we truly appreciated them. I had a great summer. Where did I go? What did I learn? What did do? I beat a video game with my oldest son, and I loved every single minute of it.