At a higher difficulty setting
There will always be more snow. (Image by Artur Pawlak)
The old-school arcade games were light on plot compared to the home console games of today.
Mostly, as you progressed in a game, the bad guys did the same basic thing, but faster or more. There were more bullets, more aliens, or the ghosts were more bloodthirsty. The blocks fell at an unmanageable pace.
This is a convenient way to make the most of the available RAM. It's also not so different from real life. We do tend to confront the same problems and challenges over and over, but at a higher difficulty setting each time.
This can be frustrating when we think we've resolved a particular issue once and for all. When it resurfaces, stronger this time, we might believe that it's already dealt with and ignore it. Or we might not perceive that we're fighting at a higher speed an intensity this time and become discouraged at our lack of progress.
It's important to remember that we are growing and gaining—and that's why we still must face difficulties. Without them, our growth will plateau and we will stagnate. Inevitably, though, the world around us can seem like one of those old 8-bit games: The same bad guys and obstacles keep showing up.
I used to work with a gifted math student who always felt stupid when she encountered a problem that she couldn't solve right away. Because math had been easier for her in the beginning than it was for her peers, she had come to associate being good at math with a feeling of ease. She had to learn that new concepts would always take time and repetition to master, and the fact that she needed this time and repetition was not evidence that she was bad at math. In fact, it meant that she was improving all the time.
Many things our lives work a similar way. You can always be more loving, generous, honest, and determined. You can always become a better writer, problem-solver, friend, parent, teacher, artist, leader, or water polo player. You can always get better at asking for help, receiving feedback, dealing with disappointment, or listening. When you find a way to grow in an area where you're already strong, that's a gift.
It's hard to process the idea that we've got more work to do when we think the work is already done. "No, the problem isn't that I am having trouble giving up control. I'm good at that. I've really mastered that. It's just that this one project matters so much to me that I'd feel more comfortable doing it myself." Mm-hmmm. Same problem, actually, just at a higher difficulty setting.
It's lazy for the universe give us the same problems over and over. Can't we have something fresh? Well, at least when the same issues repeat, we already know how to fix them. When we understand our own patterns, we can stop pushing against them and instead embrace the growth opportunity they offer. We can move through each cycle faster instead of resisting.
As we tackle each new obstacle, we will move closer to the next level. That next level is much the same, just harder. But though there may not be as many twists and turns as we were expecting in the game, it's still an adventure. And like those two-dimensional video games from the early days, we can never go back—no matter what, we're always moving forward, and our score is always going up.
