I was levelling up in real life, I felt like a video game character, just constantly improving only the battles are not with monsters its with real humans.
I grew up in a small town in the northern part of the Philippines ,the population was about 80,000 when I was growing up. Everybody knew each other, It was very cheap and life was laid back. I can go out and spend my whole day, play with my friends go to different places, never spend money and come back home tired with a belly full of food, all from different households, doors are always open, people are friendly, hospitable and they are never stingy with food.
However, as I grew older I got bored, I wanted to see other parts of my country and meet different people. My town has gotten too small for my visions and aspirations. I wanted to do more and if only I can get out of my small town that would be possible.
This is the narrative I have built around my early frustrations. I wish I can move to a bigger city so I can experience more. If I experience more, I can learn more, If I learn more then I have more to share then I can tell my friends and maybe we can experience it together so we learn together, It would would be fun.
So when I was 16 years old I moved to the big city in Metro Manila. Me and my best friend searched out schools for me to enroll at and while doing that explore what the city had to offer, and it’s a lot. So then I set out and spent my years in the big city, I learned a lot, I had my little heart broken, fell in love, danced, drank, smoked, partied and got addicted to video games. Well you see the picture. I was in College then.
Amidst all the fun stuff I have been doing, I was also learning a lot of things, during these years, I started to learn martial arts and started lifting weights , it felt amazing. I would go to different dojos to spar and compete with different athletes and met great individuals. I was so glad I found the love for fitness during these years because for a lot of reasons it changed my life. I love the way it changed my body and mind. It made me look different and set me apart from my peers. Guys started seeking advice and girls started talking to me. People wanted to hang out with me more. I was having the teenage boy’s dream.
At this point I completely stopped playing video games, because the amount of time I was spending in cyber cafe’s were absurd, just to level up a video game character. I then realized that levelling up in real life is so much cooler. Instead of my video game character gaining strength I spent hours in the gym, I Increased character intelligence by reading, level up charisma by actually talking to people and discover new skills by doing mixed martial arts.
I was levelling up in real life, I felt like a video game character, just constantly improving only the battles are not with monsters its with real humans.
While I was doing all that, I remember thinking to myself, man this is great, I’m doing all these fun and amazing things I am improving every aspect of my skill tree, but little did I know I was forgetting some parts of me the real me.
The new adventures that saved me from boredom has now become the reason of new pains that I soon encountered. I struggled to maintain friendships and acquaintances because my real friends were left behind from all the advances in life that I provided myself, I forgot about them, I ignored family most of the time because I am always busy doing something , dating has become pointless because I am more focused on improving myself than actually building a relationship, and my studies started to become a nuisance because I would rather be training or partying than hitting the books.
Newer and more complex problems are now needed to be solved, so then, I again devise some sort of quick fix, to mitigate situations that my initial solutions caused. Its crazy to think that after rectifying one life problem it just brings forth new conundrums needed to be deciphered again.
I never really realized until now that it goes on and on and on, and it will never stop. In a way, famous rapper The notorious B.I.G is metaphorically right, ” Mo money, More problems” in my case its not the money that caused me pains and problems, its the fact that I am doing more and more stuff that inhibits me to focus on the things that truly would have mattered. But fuck it, I would have hated myself anyway if I didn’t start doing those things, It was fun dammit and it taught me a lot.
Now I’m in my late 20’s I have done a lot for myself, I would never say I maximized all of my potential but I can say for sure that I explored most of it, I am not as successful as I wanted to be but I am much wiser than I expected to be.
So here’s another story, when I was about 10-14 I used to write stories, I made up a lot of shit in my head and I transferred those into writing, sometimes into drawing. I loved writing about mythical adventures, characters that are badass with super powers, world building and character exploration the whole shebang, and I wrote not because I wanted to get paid or impress someone but because I simply love to. My peers would read it and requests more and more chapters after they finish what I had written. The funny thing is they would ask me every day if I had written something in continuation from where I stopped, and these people would go crazy about it. I had a spiral notebook that I used and they would pass it on to each other after they finish, then they would return it to me hoping to read the next few pages I write.
Then I stopped, I don’t know why, maybe because I didn’t think I was good enough and that it took so much work, but now that I think about it, its because I wanted to do more for myself. What’s written above as I turned 16 yrs old is what happened next. If I could talk to my 13 year old self right now, I would tell him to not stop writing, I wish I could tell him that maybe writing was his passion, and that it didn’t really matter how much content he wrote that day, as long as he consistently wrote, it would have been fine. It all started as an avenue for my imagination, a sense of pleasure and enjoyment, and I believe that’s where real passion begins.
So what’s the lesson here, to be honest with you, I’m only writing this because I felt like as I grew older things I set out for myself were not really carried out, don’t be like me. However it is also important to know that not all plans go the way it’s supposed to. Accept that you are human, that you are going to make mistakes even if you are trying to get better every single day, you may not do it intentionally, but the byproducts of your way towards self improvement may have negative outcomes, do not stop though, go out there and see what you can really do, but always remember what’s really important to you. Find the balance in your life where you can traverse both in the Light and Dark side of self improvement.
XERGIUS 