As I was taking a walk in the park today, I was thinking about my life path—trying to be okay with where I am, trying to figure out what to do next, and how to know which steps to take next. I’ve been having a tough time with big life decisions… do I take big risks and possibly get huge rewards, or do I play it more safe? As I was thinking about all of this, I remembered a dream that I had last night. I was diving inside one of my favorite video games called Dave the Diver.
I started to swim through these little whirlpools, these white whirlpool portals. I swam through them because I was curious to see what was on the other side. I swam through one, I swam through two, until I got to the other side. I was in the vast ocean, and it was beautiful. Different fish were swimming by, there were octopi—octopuses, I don’t know how to say the plural of octopus (haha). There were whales, there was an orca, and so many more beautiful creatures.
I started to create bigger and more majestic sea animals in this ocean. They started to appear; I was creating them there with my mind. And then I swam toward this humongous octopus—it was insanely huge, think those scary, AI thalassophobia ocean videos—and I started swimming toward it. I got really scared (obviously), but I was just so curious about it. So I started swimming up toward it, and there was this button there, like in the video game, that said that I could fight it.
I was way too scared to fight it. I decided to swim away from it, even though I was really curious about it and really wanted to see what it was about. I was too afraid, so I decided not to fight it and swam off. I collected some seaweed and was in the more pleasant areas where there were mermaids, other really beautiful fish, coral, seaweed—it was just a beautiful scenery. And then the dream changes, and I’m outside.
As I remembered this whole dream that I had about the ocean and these creatures, I realized that I can look at my own life as a video game. I can gain skills, level up these skills, and understand what skills I need in order to take the next step forward to eventually defeat this boss that I was so afraid of.
How that relates more specifically to my life now is that I can gain these skills of business, money management, music creation, performance, etc., to eventually defeat this final boss of becoming a huge artist and doing huge live performances. Right now, I can focus on just getting to the next step and gaining the next skill that I need to move to the next biggest boss, instead of just focusing on the biggest boss and trying to get there directly without leveling myself up.
It’s almost like when you’re in a video game and you’re only on the first one or two levels. It’s like in the game Dragon Quest that I used to play. You can walk on this bridge, and inside the ditch underneath the bridge, there are these monsters that are like level 60. They’re huge monsters, they look really scary, and you’re only at level one.
What I was doing in real life was feeling like I should jump down that bridge and face those monsters right there, and that I should be able to do it, but also feeling way too afraid to do it. So I’ve been perpetually stuck in this situation where I’m standing on this bridge, too afraid to fight the level 60 monster down below with me being at level one, and not continuing my life. I’ve just been stuck there and thinking that the only two options are either that I jump down there and fight those monsters right now, or I stay up here and never fight them and never get a chance to fight them.
In reality, what I should be doing is just walking across the bridge to my next level one, level two monsters, so that I can gain more skills and experience, and enjoy the journey of defeating the next largest monster until I can fight those level 60 monsters.
So through all of this, I realized that seeing my life as a video game is the best way for me to view life right now—for me to be happy, and grow consistently, and actually reach where I want to get to.
As I figured that out as I was walking on this track at the park, thinking about how I should approach my life as a video game, a hawk was sitting on this really small tree a little ways ahead of me. I ended up walking right past it, and it was about eye level with me. It was the closest I’ve ever gotten to a hawk.
In that moment, I realized that I’m finally viewing my life from a higher perspective, as my guides—as life—have been trying to tell me through tarot, through other ways.. Life’s been trying to tell me to see my life from a higher perspective, but I haven’t been able to do so until now—until I saw my life as a video game and recognized that I need to gain skills gradually, and defeat gradually larger bosses, or larger tasks, to get to my main goals.
I’ve seen this hawk circling above the park for years, standing on large tree tops. Now I’m finally eye-level with the hawk.