Game Over

It’s level ten, you just spent the last two hours playing your heart out to get here and everything’s riding on this last round. As the countdown initiates your palms begin to sweat and heartbeat rises as you hear the final bell DING! You approach your opponent and just as you were about to take your swing BAM! You take a blow and go down. Seconds later, you see those two dreaded words - GAME OVER. Your mind goes blank. What just happened? As the reality begins to set in you realize, I have to start all over again from the beginning! NOOO!!

This was a frequent occurrence for a kid like me growing up in the early days of video games. There was no such thing as saving a game, you either beat it, or you lost and had to start over. No saving at checkpoints or new levels, it was all or nothing. This sucked for me as a kid, but it also made winning the game that much more rewarding.

Sometimes in life, we have to start over in essence from scratch. As I get older though that seems harder and harder to do and I don’t think I’m alone on this one. Just like a game, life has its levels or checkpoints so to speak. This could be [you fill in the blank] marriage, having kids, or even a starting a new career. Once we accomplish these life stages, we want to save the game and keep playing from there. The reality is though life doesn’t quite work like that. It’s challenging, messy, and its objective hard to pinpoint. Sometimes we even have to start all over again - It’s Game Over. Some of us accept those words and try again, this time with greater knowledge and experience to face the challenges ahead. Others see those words but don’t want to accept defeat. They will spend countless time and resources smashing buttons, hitting their console trying to get the game going again from where they left off. No matter how hard they try, nothing will make those words go away, except for starting over.