So I turn thirty-one this week.
This statement is a little more impactful if you take into consideration that 1. I am a female1 and 2. I’m not making that number up; unlike most American females, ever since I hit thirty2 I really have no problem with admitting my age. You see, there are two ways of looking at birthdays: a reminder that marks one is a year closer to death, or a celebration of one’s accomplishments up to that point. I tend to choose the latter and prefer to think of it not as getting older, but instead as “levelling up.”
Imagine if you will that life is nothing more than an extremely long, very high-definition, 3-dimensional video game RPG.3 Everything you do – every drive to work, every date you go on, every trip through the grocery store – all of it is just stages to the different levels of your particular game. Make it from Point A to Point B on the freeway without getting rear-ended by someone fixing her mascara at 70 miles per hour – level complete. Extract last French cruller4 from donut shop and make it to office on time – level complete. Survive morning meeting with demanding customer without having soul die – holy crap, you earned skill bonus!
As far as the framework, your upbringing (“training mode”) sets the basics for how your game is to be played.5Once you learn the basics, you choose your objectives, then your class and initial skills (college/majors or trade), which opens up different quests to your character; for example, if one chooses the “accountancy” major, quests like “successfully conduct brain surgery” generally won’t come up in that person’s quest queue.6 As a result, everybody’s game is going to be different. The choices you make affect how the game continues: do you play single-player (single, living alone) or multi-player (significant other/roommates)? Do you play the game straight (work and play fair, earn what you receive) or employ cheat codes (skip your taxes, swindle the elderly)? Are you more concerned with maxing out skill points early in a particular area (Straight to grad school! Master a new instrument in a year! Pop out twelve kids before you hit twenty-nine!) or taking the time to try different interests and build those skills slowly over time (dabble in the garden one day, set fire to a soufflé the next, eventually figure out what the hell you’re doing)?
Now consider how the gameplay itself works. Generally speaking, you start out early in your adventure with a lot of ideas and little experience. Experience is gained through quests. Your available resources to help you through said quests at the beginning will vary depending on what kind of training mode you went through and how resourceful you are. Maybe you have a mentor (strategy guide) or some friends with experience (game community) to help you sort through these quests and objectives – this often does make things a little bit easier, but it’s still up to you and you alone to earn those experience points.
Because without experience points, you can’t level up.
Going back to the original definition of the phrase, Wiktionary.com describes levelling up as “to progress to the next level of player character stats and abilities, often by acquiring experience points in role-playing games.” But if we take that idea and apply it to the world outside of gaming, we end up with a definition closer to that of Urbandictionary.com: “to make a move in your life or career for the better.”
Now I can feel some of you reading those words with a tiny cringe and immediately coming up with arguments about why that statement immediately negates my assertion about birthdays and levelling up being intertwined: “not everyone has those moves for the better every year.” “An angry web-female just stabbed me in the hand with a fork.7” “I just lost my job or my spouse or my shady tax accountant this year – how is that a step for the better?” Or the more positive and thought-provoking “but people hit achievements, as you’ve laid them out, at different ages. Are you saying that someone who earned their doctorate at thirty is older than a fifty-five year old who hasn’t done that?”
Not at all.
The key piece to remember here is something I mentioned earlier: everybody’s game is going to be different. Everybody’s objectives and goals and experiences are going to be different, which means everybody’s timelines are, yes, also going to be different. This is a choose-your-own-adventure of the most epic proportions. To quote a line from Mary Schmich’s famous graduation speech, “sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”
What I’m saying is, when that very personal anniversary rolls around every 365 days, don’t see it as a reminder of all the things you’ve yet to complete on your quest list. Don’t lie about what level you’re at in a foolish belief that cheating yourself an “extra” year or twelve of “youth” is going to make things better. Use that day instead as a measuring stick as to how far you’ve come8, the accomplishments you’ve earned, and the badges of honor you’ve unlocked.
Use it as a day to level up.
*****
1 Though apparently not a “real woman;” see the beginning of Ghost in the Podcast episode 86 for reference.
2 I realize this also is usually the opposite of what most American females do, but I wouldn’t openly talk about my age until I hit thirty. For context, you have to take into account that my entire career has been spent educating adults older than my parents, so being in one’s twenties doesn’t exactly give you street cred with that population. Thirty, apparently, makes you a real adult.
3 Which, incidentally, is the ONLY way I avoided having a full-blown panic attack in the middle of an ill-advised Saturday afternoon trip to the local shopping mall.
4 Touch it and I will cut you.
5 And by upbringing, I include the choices and values you develop as a result of or in spite of those circumstances set on you as a child. An obvious example would be being raised in a particular religion that is later rejected by the child – there are reasons for one to either accept or reject certain ideas that may not always be overt, or even seeming to have a direct connection.
6 Unless said person is Biomed Alchemist, in which case the likelihood increases dramatically and usually through a case of mistakenly assumed identity.
7 I told you not to touch that cruller.
8 My personal levelling up conversation with myself posts on thefourthcastle.wordpress.com
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