Stress

I played a computer game called Darkest Dungeon in high school. You can take a look at the picture below to get a good sense of what the game is like. Simply put, it’s stressful.

Ironically, stress while playing the game is almost always caused by your characters, who are stressed as well. Stress is one of the defining mechanics of the game – when a player’s heroes encounter particularly disturbing enemies, barely survive a battle, or see their allies meet their end – the individual heroes get stressed as well.

Just as in the real world, stress has a cost in Darkest Dungeon. Reaching 100 stress (the cap) leads to devastating consequences for a hero. They develop afflictions, ranging from becoming masochistic, developing phobias, or refusing to follow directions that the player inputs.

However, there is a small chance that instead a hero will develop a Virtue, a positive affliction that gives them greater confidence and strength than those around them. Reaching their breaking point suddenly grants them greater resolve, and those who survive these high-stress moments become the leaders of future expeditions.

This system for describing stress is remarkably realistic. Forgive me for being morbid, but life is similar to Darkest Dungeon.

In the game, it’s emphasized that heroes willingly volunteer to venture into dungeons and confront their fears. The price they pay is the same price we pay in our own lives for taking risks – high stress, our fears, and sometimes even our own health.

The reward? A select few are able to thrive in these stressful conditions. Even as others around them become paralyzed by the challenge, some have the resolve to ultimately overcome their obstacles.

So why write this? Isn’t this something we know already? There’s a widespread notion that in order to be successful, we need to be “comfortable with being uncomfortable”.

Well, I think there’s more behind this: I believe that the price of taking risks is the same as in Darkest Dungeon. As we surmount more obstacles in our everyday lives, we continue to seek out new ones – more challenging and difficult than before. Mounting successes make us numb to the risk, but every challenge has its price, and just as in Darkest Dungeon, no hero is infallible.

It’s important to be mindful of the risks we take in confronting new obstacles: the price of failure can often be masked, and only upon failure can we comprehend the cost.

Unlike the previous essays, I’m not sure what the point of this one is.

On one hand, I feel that it’s necessary to push ourselves to confront new challenges; surviving from the brink leads to growth like nothing else in life. Many of the most successful people I know are survivors of high-stress all-or-nothing scenarios; I would ascribe much of my success to the same.

On the other hand, I’ve found it depressing to see my peers take on risks without knowledge of the consequences. Losing motivation, imposter syndrome, and the feeling that one’s best isn’t enough, are among the many costs that I’ve seen others pay.

Just as in Darkest Dungeon, these beliefs need treatment and recovery time, and attempting to disregard our afflictions can lead to disastrous consequences.

Put simply, I think stress is something that is trivialized in modern day society, and has evolved to become something that we don’t weigh enough in our risk assessments.