Health at Zero: Waiting to Respawn

It was bound to happen. I'm just surprised it took this long. But I've finally come down sick. My throat is sore and I'm running a mild fever. And of course all this the day before a final exam. If that wasn't enough, I spent the whole day drinking tea for my sore throat that turned out to contain an allergen that gave me a migraine!

I spent a large portion of the day napping off my migraine. I definitely did the reading that I needed to do but I can't say the information really stuck. To be completely honest, I pretty much just skimmed between closing my eyes. It's the kind of situation that could give you an ulcer. I know a lot of people in my University that would come unglued. But I'm learning a lot about life, the way things happen, and how to deal.

The fact of the matter is: there is nothing I can do about this. The body breaks down. After four months of managing full time school, part time work, and the rest of my life, I finally ran out of stamina. It's like my little health bar ran down and there's no health pack in sight. I suppose I could spend my time adding to the situation by piling on the mental stress: I'm going to fail the exam! How can I succeed if I can't study? This is terrible! This is going to ruin my grade, my GPA, and possibly my life!

But the truth is that spending the day healing is probably better for me anyways. I have time tomorrow morning to review the material and fill in any gaps that occurred in my migraine impacted brain. Whatever grade I get will be better than nothing at all, my other classes will balance out my GPA and I'm only in my second year of uni. My life is far from ruined.

It has been a very long journey for me to arrive at this place, mentally speaking. It's such a cliche for someone to tell you, "Just let it go". But if you can learn how to do it, life becomes so much better. It isn't that consequences do not occur nor that pain does not have an impact. It's just that if you can remember that it won't be permanent... that eventually something new will come along... if you can learn to be excited about the Possibilities you don't even know about... suddenly stressors just become potholes in the journey of life rather than roadblocks!

Instead of stopping short, just bounce your way across the rough and keep on going. Maybe it's lessons I've learned from video games. But when things are dire, you can always wait until you respawn and try again. Of course, in games you get to replay the exact same level until you can do it perfectly and in life you have play a new level every single day. But if you don't let the unexpected derail you then you'll have that much more of a running start when you hit the ground on your next adventure.

And if you don't think that life is an adventure... you're not doing it right!