life is not a problem. life is a game.

When I was a lot younger than I am now, I used to often head over to my neighbor's house to play. We mostly played outside, but there was a time when they had the best best gaming console in the neighborhood, and we spent many an hour in front of their TV. The most popular game at the time was a game called Adventure Island. I remember many fun hours trying collect all the dinosaurs and knowing which egg to choose at the end of every stage.

I recently found a way to download these games onto my mac and I didn't hesitate to do this, hoping to relive the same moments and enjoy it again. I had a blast for the first 5 minutes before feeling an incredible urge to play the game perfectly. Perhaps I could download a cheat sheet that would show where all the bonus eggs were, and how to play each stage the best and accumulate the most points.

Playing the game was frustrating because I was not sure that I was playing it the best. And so I wanted to stop playing and start problem-solving. And really, how fun can following a set of instructions be anyway?

Joy diminishes when we stop playing life and start trying to solve life. It is probably a reason I don't write as much as before - because I want the post to be perfect - and achieve a top score with every post. And because I have started to believe that life is not a game, I forget to play like I played when I was a child.