Pretzel Logic Music

Tonight I finally completed Dark Souls III; took me almost four years, on and off and restarting from the beginning a couple times.
I’m very satisfied with myself and when the last sword hit brought the final boss to his knees, the rush of endorphins was epic.
Let me explain:
The Dark Souls games, if you don’t know them, have very peculiar game mechanics (not boring you with that) that make them very difficult to play. The game is utterly unforgiving and all the fights are challenging, even when you’re a seasoned player.
Misreading the opponent’s body language? You die.
Reacting a split second too late? You die.
Getting the timing of an attack wrong? Yep, you die.
In short: you die a lot, but the game is never unfair: every single time you die, you deserved it.

You can look at it as an extraordinary metaphor for life, learning and elevation.
Dying is the whole point of the game. If you want to see the last boss fall, you have to embrace failure as a tool. Try and die a million times and then succeed at the millionth and one attempt.
Along the way you learn awareness, analysis, patience and self forgiveness, but more than anything else, the notion that to be good at something you have to suck at something for a long time and just show up and do it again;
“Showing up is half the gig” as someone much smarter than me once said.
Dark Souls has taught me to put in the hours, take breaks when I’m overwhelmed and accept defeat as the only way to evolve. These are life skills that I then applied to my career and journey.

My favourite quote (and the rule I live by) is “Embarrassment is the price of admission to excellence” and the hundreds of digital deaths in Dark Souls exemplify it beautifully.
Everything is impossible until it’s not