We're On An Adventure... With Monsters.

If I know one thing about the classic Fantasy/Adventure RPG it's that you're going to have to fight a bunch of monsters, or solve a bunch of puzzles, or overcome at least some adversity of some other kind to achieve your goal. In my blog post, We're On An Adventure!!, I said that:

The great thing about adventurers in some stories and most role-playing games is that they grow stronger and more skilled through the challenges they face, and the same is true for us. As we face difficult challenges, we gain or unlock power, skills, and abilities that we didn't have before, or at least didn't know we had. The harder our challenges are, the more we grow. In that sense, the tougher our obstacles are, the better they'll be for us in the long run.

I had an "adventure" yesterday in which I faced some opposition and notably lacked the optimism that I usually have. The challenge I face now is learning how to maintain that "I'm-on-an-adventure!!" optimism while the going is rough. And the solution I came up with off the top of my head was to treat adversity the same way fantasy games treat monsters.

In my blog post, Prerequisites, I made fun of Fantasy RPGs for requiring characters to fight monsters in order to gain experience (XP) in any skill, whether that skill relates to fighting monsters or not. But now I think they may be on to something. If we use the term "monster" to refer to any sort of challenge we may face in this mortal adventure of ours, then fighting those monsters, or facing those challenges, is a necessary part of practicing our skills and gaining real-world experience. Yes, those monsters can be tough to fight, but that's how it's supposed to be. The tougher the monsters you defeat in Fantasy RPGs are, the more XP you gain from them. The tougher challenges we overcome in real life, the more we learn and grow.

As I have just started playing an official Fantasy Role-Playing Game, I've loved watching my character develop his own personality and can't wait for him to improve on his skills. That means he needs more XP, which needs he needs to fight more monsters, and I'm excited for him to do that. Some athletes probably feel the same way about themselves. They're eager to see progress in their own improvement, so they look forward to opportunities to test and train their skills. Exercise is hard work, and so is fighting monsters, or facing any other challenges, but the harder they are, the more XP we gain from them, and the more XP we earn, the stronger we become. Our challenges aren't just obstacles. They're opportunities to grow.

Seeing our challenges in this light, gaining opportunities to face them can become exciting, and not just in the sense that fighting monsters tends to be exciting - and frightening. If facing challenges is the best, and in fact, the only way to improve ourselves, then all of the positive emotion we have for self-improvement could justly be put into facing challenges. If we like becoming more capable, we should be excited about opportunities to become more capable.

This is easy enough to say while I'm sitting at my computer, not being required to do anything too difficult, and I'm sure my perspective and my attitude will be much worse when I face challenges than it is now, just like it was yesterday. It will take a conscious effort for me to get excited about facing challenges, but at least now I know I have a good reason to be. Challenges ≈ Monsters, Monsters -> XP, XP -> Leveling up, and Leveling up ≈ Becoming Awesome. And I'm really looking forward to becoming awesome. If facing challenges in mortality is the only, or best, way to eventually become awesome (and it must be, or God would have come up with a better plan), so be it. This Armor of God isn't just something we wear because it's shiny. We wear it so it can help us get through tough fights. So bring them on, and I'll try to stay optimistic as I face them.