Gauntlet Legends

As an average child raised primarily in the 90’s video games were still at their infancy in terms of their regularity in people’s lives. I mean, yea, Atari was around like 20 years before my time, but it wasn’t like a staple in a household yet. Not like the 90s brought about, not like our house anyways. Nintendo was cool, Sega was fine, but when the Nintendo 64 came about, and a game called Gauntlet Legends was discovered, my brothers and I had the ability to take our bickering to another realm. 

The game was set up so that all players shared the same screen, so, the further players got away from each other, the more zoomed out the screen got, leaving tiny bumbling figures at ends of the screen, sometimes stuck, glitches we found early on in the game. Sometimes if a heard of bad guys came out and attacked one member of our group, then the rest could run away and leave him to lose all of his life. When a chest or food was found, life-giving forces in the game, there was a scramble to see who could get their first, without acknowledging the weakest-life person. 

You see, we were brothers, and if you’ve read anything about me up until this point, you will see that we simply did not get along, for various reasons only therapy can get to the core of. However, when it came to video games, we were MOST likely to get along, contribute to one another’s inventory, sharing of resources, because in the end it made the team stronger. After all, when things went down and only one person was left, the other people had to just watch, but the game was prepared for 4 players and so for one to take it was just unfair. Sometimes, in my antagonistic ways, I would keep the game going, versus bailing out to start over again with my squad. 

The team was stronger when we all contributed, a basic idea in sports, but one often overlooked in work, relationships, our children’s school, where instead of all contributing, there is a subltle undercutting, driven by some need to succeed, where a slight sense of satisfaction might come about when that person you worked with got fired or talked badly about, even if they are a solid contributor to the team. 

Many times this is driven by some shame-ridden feeling inside that likes to see others fail, so that they will then be seen as a success. The internal workings of a weak person unable to truly be happy for someone because they are competing afterall and if someone “wins” first, then that must mean I lost, a detrimental feeling that doesn’t necessarily have to be true. The catch is that you have to notice a problem to work on it. You have to notice your desires and enjoyment of seeing other people struggle or fail before you would take a look inside as to why this is, because logically, it makes no sense to want the others around us to fail. 

Our actions, driven by our underlying desires, only to result in negative environments, such as the one made amongst the brothers and I, as the house seemed to shrink the more we fought. The more mom became upset because of our increased fighting, the more dad got annoyed, and the more everyone was unhappy, festering resentment, harboring the need to escape, the distancing from family because, they are the problem, not me. 

Well, even though it was just a video game, the lack of team work and increased competition was a reflection of the kids who saw the world the same way, “out to get them.” 

The world does not have to be a competitive place, and if you find yourself around competitive, superficial, negative people, than you need to check where you’re at, because progress will not happen. You can’t grow a plant in unusable soil, you can’t drink tepid water, you will have an extremely difficult time changing when your environment sucks. May I suggest looking at yourself, what sets you off first, then looking towards the environment to see if those parts of you notices are promoted. 

I wrote a book about how my competitive view of the world, manifested into an eating disorder, than a body image disorder, and eventually into a recovery situation where I was driven to the brink of a destructive life. For this book, click HERE.