u/nkh3

A short story about how we slave away to our habits and our self perception

You can also read on substack if you'd like.

https://stillclosed.substack.com/p/luigis-mansion-and-the-shadow-of

Luigi's Mansion is a game I played and liked.

It doesn't happen often that games fall into my hands out of nowhere. Usually a game gets my attention either through its marketing campaign, or because I read something about it, or because I watch a related video, or because a friend simply talks to me about it. And so I keep a mental note in my mind about yet another game that might someday fill my time in a meaningful and beautiful way.

The search for entertainment through gaming is a habit deeply rooted in me, shaped during my childhood. Such habits don't change easily, and they don't need to, unless they are harmful. I consider such passions a blessing. In my memories, every period is characterized, among other things, by the game I was playing at that time. They function as milestones, similar to how the places I visit during holidays mark my summers. Video games are a part of my life's story, of my conversations with my friends, of our shared experiences, they are the art form which I have been behaviorally programmed to turn towards. And art is life... Just like baby turtles who hatch from their eggs and dash straight towards the sea, so too I, driven by a very powerful instinct, follow the first impulse that arises within me and turn to video games in order to meaningfully spend my free time. It is part of my identity, and like every passion, it has facets that can become an obstacle to a smooth and balanced daily life. Or to be more specific (and simultaneously not), video games as a hobby can become the arena on which certain greedy human instincts, ones that don't harmonize with each other, collide.

Allow me to introduce you to stress. Stress has two parents. Father Autism and Mother ADHD. The two parents sometimes argue, and their opposing demands contaminate the, by definition carefree, process of play. When the two parents clash, stress is born. Father demands that I am productive and keeps me anchored to my habits. "You must finish what you start," he dictates, while Mother rushes to undervalue whatever I'm doing and lure me away with intoxicating promises about other adventures.

(A small disclaimer. The above terms are used purely for humor. I have no ability to diagnose neurodivergence. And even if I did, self-diagnosis is never a good idea.)

FOMO + Productivity Treadmill

It's not foolish, nor easy to shake off. When a hobby is a significant part of your lifestyle and you've learned to find meaning in your time through it, and at the same time you carry the belief that, at the end of the day, you owe to have something to show for your time in this world, then surrendering to the finiteness of time and letting digital moments slip away into the unrealized possibilities is the equivalent of a small death. As exaggerated as it may sound, FOMO is, in its most stripped-down form, the fear of death. The fear of not having enough time to live. We are not built to face our own mortality. It always sits at the back of our minds, we know it's there, but we constantly avert our gaze.

As a result, I often find myself with a sense of urgency in my daily life regarding my hobbies, and although compared to most people I am privileged in how much free time I have, there is a dark postscript waiting for me at the end of each day that reads: "Your life doesn't hold enough life."

For some, the subject of their FOMO might be travel; for others, their online blueprint; for others, their art. However you look at it, measuring the value of your time in any currency whatsoever is a game rigged by evolution in which we all participate, and in which we are apparently trying to figure out among ourselves, who will lose the most spectacularly. And all of this, with no audience.

Boredom

On the opposite end, there are times when I'm simply bored. These moments automatically escalate into moments of existential unease. As if I don't know where I'm headed. It becomes frightening, as if my instincts are betraying me. "If I'm bored of video games, then what?" As if I'm breaking down. And maybe I am breaking down, momentarily. The human organism is a biological machine assembled haphazardly across the centuries, whose only real specification is to be sufficiently capable of surviving. It owes us no clear answers, nor favorable winds. Come to think of it, I would describe the human organism as quite cantankerous (thank the internet for this word).

In those moments, the most useful thing I can do is to identify the above patterns and withdraw from them, grounding my attention from the vagueness of existence into the present, and stepping off my usual paths when they seem to be leading to dead ends.

So where does Luigi's Mansion fit into all of this? It doesn’t. Luigi's Mansion was simply a game I played and liked.

Backlog

Back to the patterns then, I finished Luigi's Mansion and, in order to choose my next game, I naturally turn to my backlog. And although I usually let my mood guide me to the next digital adventure, there is a lurking sense of obligation, an invisible hand that directed me towards my backlog in the first place. Ah yes... it is once again that cursed perception that I can (or that it's even advisable) to optimize my life by optimizing specifically the entertainment I consume. And since we're talking about optimization, let me reintroduce you to my compulsive need to complete every game I start. Because upon completion, the video game becomes a measurable credential of my time and its worth. It's as if I'm asking of the process of playing to add something to the story of my life, and by extension to my identity. I play, therefore I exist. An autistic instinct. And it frequently clashes with my tidal mood, which at times rightly cries out that my time with a game is up (I'm bored, for goodness' sake), and at other times seduces me with songs of sirens promising more satisfying journeys along distant paths of other distant games that will surely never bore me.

Perhaps it is somewhat unfair to call it a compulsion, my desire to complete the games I start, since I genuinely believe that commitment to experiencing a work in its entirety, even when it has weak moments, is something beneficial and above all entertaining. And perhaps it is unfair to call the lack of dopamine ADHD, since my organism may very well be a better advisor for what I truly need in that moment than my bloated with ideas head…

The best solution I've found for maintaining balance between my instincts is, first, to give myself permission to play two or three games in parallel, and second, to remind myself to turn towards activities outside of gaming. To escape from my habits, not merely mechanically, by doing something else or spending a few days away from gaming, but holistically and genuinely, by giving mental space and value to the many other dimensions of life. And never mind if they don't fit neatly with who I am. Perhaps that's even better. After all, I'm nobody. We don't need to take ourselves so seriously; life is a sequence of moments that are under no obligation to compose any story. And if we could free ourselves from this obsession, we would see that underneath the shadow of the absence of meaning, the only thing that can stand on its own light is the purposeless moment.

Luigi's Mansion

Luigi's Mansion didn't fill with meaning the two weeks I spent with it, nor was it some world-shaping experience. But it was soothing, comforting, a parenthesis I lived apart from the "normal" rhythm of my life. It was a game free of any sense of obligation and any expectation. I hadn't bought it, it wasn't trending, it wasn't a must-play, it isn't a significant piece of gaming history as I understand it, I had never even thought about playing it. It simply appeared in front of me, on NSO, asking nothing of me. And asking nothing of it myself, I began to get to know it, and for the next roughly 10 hours my instincts went quiet and my organism was in perfect harmony with each moment. Pure play. Perhaps it also helped that it's a work from 2002, and as such managed to bring me into contact with simpler, more childlike instincts. Through the sounds it carries, its visuals, its habits, its 480p resolution, its charm in general. It arrived as a spontaneous detour, like those streets in your neighborhood you'd never noticed before, whose exploration creates a pocket of intellectual adventure, surprise amid the predictability of a familiar route. I think it is the exercise of our freedom that generates such satisfaction. The temporary liberation from our habits. The questioning of the productivity-worshipping mentality embedded within us, that obsesses over stories and roles, that smothers spontaneity and diversity, and that the best response to it is a purposeless detour. Perhaps, in the end, it is precisely because Luigi's Mansion didn't fit anywhere…that I liked it.

Freedom

Isn't it somewhat tragic? How we grow up and, on the altar of efficiency, we lose the greatest wisdom we possessed as children? To play simply for the sake of playing. To live in the moment. Even to be curious. Back then it was easy to look at the world around us without prejudice, without rushing ahead or pre-judging anything, surrendered to whatever was unfolding before us, with all possibilities open, giving each moment our full attention, giving each moment value. I remember how excited I would get when I went to school and bought a new pencil. I would write, and as I wrote I had all my senses wide open, I was alert and my sensory antennae were steadily tuned towards the stimuli that the use of the new pencil offered. Then I grew up, and a new pencil was no longer enough for me to refocus my attention on the stimuli of writing. Because I had reasonably come to understand that all pencils wrote the same. And somewhere along those lines... I forgot what it's like to write with a pencil.

Wait a moment, wait a moment, let me think! What went wrong and now I no longer remember what it's like to write with a pencil? So.. I was writing with a pencil. Fine. And my senses were wide open. And I liked it... Good so far. And then my senses failed to absorb any new stimulus for quite some time, and so the chapter "writing with a pencil" closed. The file was sealed and filed away in the drawer. Fine. Understandable. But what if I was wrong? What if my mind, 25 years later, could add something to this experience? Who's to say that I, my 25-years-wiser self, would perceive everything as before, the texture of the pencil, for example, or its smell, or the trace it leaves behind on paper, or the patterns the eraser makes in the air as I write? Even my movements may have changed! Would all of this be useful or useless to me? Retrieving that forgotten file from the drawer?

Useful for what? Perhaps I should define my goal. Alright then, I clear my throat for emphasis and decide now. "My goal is exploration!"... hmm... that came out spontaneously. But I think I like it as a goal, and what's more, it's starting to seem like all of this might be useful. It's obvious that I miss my childhood, isn't it? That I want it back. One might say I'm not happy, but that's not it. I am. It's just that... in adult life everything is so... colorless... so mechanical. What the hell, it can't be, there must be some way for my eyes to sparkle again! To break free from the loop of my habits, to which I return again and again and again and AGAIN, solely because somewhere deep inside my poor mind there are rooted memories that once, when I was a child, or when I was a teenager, I tried out one and two and three and four, and I learned then that I liked one and two and three and four. And after that, that was it! I built my entire identity on top of that. The rest of N is missing! I am blind to it. And so I often return to one and two and three and four only to be disappointed, realizing in a different way each time that nothing is like it used to be. Not the films, nor the music, nor my friends, nor the world - nor, nor, nor. One, two, three, four…

Well, that's that. I'm going to run an experiment. For a little while each day, I will open whatever file I find in front of me. I will turn my gaze to where it would not turn under other circumstances. I will maximize the intake of stimuli. I will search where I don't believe there is anything to be found. I will unlearn what I have learned, or rather, I will re-examine what I know, I will relive life, I will learn to discern dark matter in every inch of empty space, I will let every parallel dimension reveal itself to me. I will reclaim the wisdom I lost when I grew up. I will stop assuming that I know. 

I will be reborn.