Why You Should Compare Your Life to Video Games (Especially if You Struggle With Anxiety)
Can the idea of video games help you live a better life?
Have you ever played an open world video game? It’s the kind of game in which, besides completing the story, you can freely explore the virtual environment with your character. It might be a digital version of New York City, a vast fantasy world with villages, mountains and forests, or a cyberpunk concrete jungle filled with high-rises. If you’ve ever played such a game, you might be familiar with that rush of excitement and joy that fills the brain at the possibility of exploring the game’s universe. It’s the excitement and joy of endless possibilities. It’s the excitement and joy of living.
I’ve certainly felt that feeling many times. Most recently a few days ago, when I saw a trailer for the Cyberpunk 2077 game. That was when I realised: I live in an amazing open world — the real world — with endless possibilities, yet lately I spend much of my time in the same apartment, the same few places, and filled with the same anxiety at the thought of living.
Crippled by anxiety
When I think of an open-world video game, it’s so easy to feel that excitement, that will to explore, but in the greatest open world of all, I am crippled by my fears.
To give you an example: I’ve been single for several months now and ideally I should be hitting some bars and clubs every weekend to try and meet new girls. But I don’t do it, because my anxieties are holding me back — the club scene, the many people, the potential rude behaviours I could encounter, and my brain goes pouring out the reasons to be anxious about the prospect of going out. If I imagine the same scenario, but in a video game, I have absolutely no doubt that I would immediately move my character and find some attractive women to flirt with.
Weeks and months can go by with similar inaction in other areas of life as well. Almost every time I think about a comparison between what I’d be doing in a video game versus what I actually do in real life, I’m baffled by the contrast. Just think about it: if you were playing yourself in a video game — free of anxiety — and you could do whatever you wanted, how much time would you actually spend in your room, in front of the TV, scrolling endless feeds on your smartphone? Probably not that much.
Obligations and death
Of course, in real life there are obligations. We need to work and we need to make money, so not many of us can allow ourselves to do exactly what we’d like, to roam freely, to travel and explore all day every day.
There’s also a thing called death in the real world, which means we need to have a certain amount of reasonable caution when interacting with the environment and the people around us.
However, this reasonable cautiousness often turns into an overcautiousness in many, and for those of us with anxiety, it can become a crippling chain of fear that holds us back from doing the exact things we most want to do.
Try this yourself
So I encourage you to try this thought experiment: compare your life to open-world video games that you’d be excited to play. Compare how much you’d be using your freedom in a game to how much you’re using your freedom in real life. How much more would you be doing if you could only rid yourself of anxiety and act as freely as you do in a video game?
If you’re not into games, a similar thought experiment can be conducted by imagining that your life is a book. You’re reading this book and you have the freedom to decide what the main character does next. Would you be living the same life you’re living right now?
Don’t play the games though
The interesting thing is that, while using the idea of video games is a great way to gain a fresh perspective on life, playing them is not a very good idea, in my opinion. The whole point of this fresh perspective is to realise that you’re chained by your anxieties and that there’s so much more you want to do that you’re not doing in real life. So picking up the controller and playing a game would be counterproductive — it would be another escape from having to pull yourself together and try to live the kind of life you actually want. (Unless of course you are already living your life to the fullest and you just happen to enjoy exploring the virtual worlds of video games on the side.)
I hope this thought experiment opens your eyes as much as it opened mine. Taking action afterwards is a completely different story, of course, and it’s easier said than done. I do hope, however, that you use this newfound insight to take more action and to free yourself from the anxiety that bounds.
