Imagine this, you wake up in a world out in a field somewhere, no one in sight. You look around and realize you are alone. You wander, looking at the trees, grass and angular clouds, you see a bee or two and before you know it night time begins to fall. You hear groaning and ticking, you have the feeling that you need to hide. But how? You attempt to dig yourself a hole to hide in and you discover that every block you destroy can be used again, taking the blocks of dirt you collected you build yourself a little hut. Slowly you learn the things you can make bit by bit to create something for yourself to expand and explore your world . Anything is possible.
Now I will spare you from too many more details of the game given you’ve either already played or you haven’t and you’re wondering where this is going. I am using this game as an example of the great journey into creating, sustaining, and coming back to your creative work.
I never played the game when I was younger and now in my adult years after watching the Minecraft movie with my nephew, and my boyfriend telling me how much fun he had playing when he was younger we decided we would do a trial run. That trial run turned into a very needed lesson for me.
Everything in the game you can do isn’t told to you, you have to explore and try things to figure it out or research how to. Sound familiar? Like life, we do not receive a handbook on how to, it is all up to us as you may already know…
After playing the game for almost a year since, I find it to be a useful tool in my life to take the seriousness out of how I view creating as well as life itself. It helps me practice letting myself come up with things to do and small goals to go towards. I can see all my choices come together to help me make something. It shows me the breakdown of the process from the idea, to collecting materials, to the application of the elements coming together. It helps me practice failing and letting that be part of the fun.
Like life, Minecraft shares some crucial lessons.
- Life is what you make it. Go big, go small, it’s up to you. You can explore or you can develop your own world right where you are.
- You can create something if all you have is your own hands to start. Nothing holds you back from this but you. If you have something you really care about expressing you will find a way to make it happen.
- There are no right answers. You can take the creative way or the survival way, or both. And you can change your mind at any time.
- It’s all not that serious. Play around, try something. Allow yourself to try and fail. Show yourself you can. You win even if you lose, if you choose to view the process and inevitable failure as necessary. Even if you don’t get where you think you will, when you keep moving forward you run into many new and exciting things you can’t make up for yourself. Which is part of the profound joys as well as sorrows of life. Showing up in itself is worth it, if you choose to believe so.
If you choose to revisit the game or sit with these ideas, I think there is the potential to bring some truly profound takeaways with you into your own world.
Life is what you make it, life is what you make IN it, life is what you make inside yourself. Maybe you could see where an idea takes you for the fun of it, for the fail of it. Perhaps you will discover much more than you thought. Maybe an entire world’s worth.
Leave a Reply