on resisting
i spent the better part of 10 years of my life grinding competitive League of Legends.
League of Legends is a funny game. it's a 5v5 and, after a certain point in a match, one mistake by a single member can define the game. this means that, usually, the influence of a single player on their teams winrate has much more negative variance than it does positive. it's very easy to solo lose the game and it's very hard to solo win the game.
there are, as well, many many times during a match where you, individually, won't have agency. there will be situations where you'll depend on your teammates in order to be able to play, regardless of your skill level/position/situation, in pretty much every single match of League.
this leads to a very frustrating experience. this is, at its core, why your friends tell you "don't play League".
you know how fucking infuriating it is to play perfectly and lose because of your teammates? it drives people insane!
why does that happen?
its just a game right?
how terrible can losing be?
some people intentionally choose to suffer.
suffering is addicting and these people lean into it hard.
these are the people that, during their soloq game, sign a metaphorical mental contract with the game.
the contract says: "put in the work, and results will happen".
the game is a fucking dirty liar. you put in the work and you still lose, every single time.
that's when you run into this phenomenon. there's a specific magic word, so short yet so immensely powerful.
i was trapped for over 10 years in the depths of the darkest pits of depression, my prison cell patrolled by this word constantly echoing around its bone walls every single day.
"WHY"
why me? why did i have to lose? why am i autistic? why am i different from the other kids, can't i just be normal? why did i say it like that? why must this happen to me? why? why? why?
the separation between ideal and reality can very easily lead to suffering if you cast the spell of why
mindfulness meditation is a very cool thing you might have heard of.
to me, it was nothing like it was described.
what it did for me was it trained my capacity to separate my thoughts from my actions.
it gave me much more "thought observing" skill, which naturally lends itself to "pause here, right at this feeling" skill.
its sorta like a debugger stepping through code.
what happens if we stand at the step after the shitty situation and we choose to embrace it instead of rejecting it?
the thing already happened, you can only choose how you react to it.
don't go into the whyloop. surf the wave, or perish.