Life is like playing a video game

Tutorial: At the start of a video game someone tells you the premise and teaches you the basic controls that will help you get by each level in a one size for all kind of way.

This is the role your parents and teachers play in your life.

Practice: You do a few practise rounds which don’t seem to have any long lasting impact on your game.

This could be the time you spend during school and college.

Patience: The goal is far away. You get there by taking on one challenge at a time. And once you get to the goal, you realise there are other quests you’d like to pursue.

This is probably going to be true for any point of time in you life.

Skills: You develop and hone your skills as you progress through each level. This is also the time when you learn to tweak the manual to your own advantage.

These are the soft skills you pick up, the books you read etc.

Tools: You pick up tools that help you get through levels that would have otherwise been difficult.

This can be your field of specialisation or equipment you buy or create to make your life easier.

Help: Sometimes you take the help of friends and YouTube to cross a level

These are your go-to people, support systems, therapists or reliable sources of information you tap into when stuck somewhere.

Cheat Codes: Sometimes you use cheat codes or skip a level that you are stuck on.

This is the time when you realise that you need to find loopholes in the system or make peace with how things are.

Failure: You can also fail and replay. Sometimes you’re out of lives and you might have to wait a bit before you get to play again.

It’s ok to fail. Now you know what not to do.

And remember it’s just a video game, you don’t need to take life too seriously.