single player.

It’s quite disheartening to realise that there’s a chance that all this hard work could amount to nothing, or that the door I’m desperate to burst through has closed shut before I’ve even reached for the handle. Coupled with the certainty that I am bound to make countless mistakes on the way, it seems the path I’m trying to forge is becoming increasingly stubborn as I attempt to pave it. I am not some unstoppable force that is capable to shifting these immovable objects.

How much of what I am seeing in front of me is reality, or just a reassuring perception that I’m conjuring up for myself? Am I seeing what I’m seeing as a mechanism to lower expectations and dampen the effects of failure, which might inadvertently create the failure I was hoping to avoid to begin with? Is it hapless naivety to keep pursuing a room behind a door that might never well open?

Perception is deep-rooted, and it’s at odds with what’s real, because reality is neutral. It doesn’t pass judgment or pander to internal biases. It can’t be hacked and it can be pierced. It is there, and it’s all that will ever be there.

As much as I might believe that there are other players in this mad game who are locking doors when they hear me approaching and shepherding me down dead ends, in reality, I’m in a single player game. Whatever I think and believe will shape my reality. There is much external influence that is out of my hands, but what is firmly within my grasp is how I choose to see the world in front of me.

Just because there are locks doesn’t mean I have to see them. And just because I might retire in failure, doesn’t mean I will stop working.

It’s a process.