LIFE IS NOT A SNAKE GAME

Recalling the early days, thinking about what place to take in this world, and what roles our first playgrounds gave us, everything looked huge, hard to conquer. You know that feeling when you return to a place you once thought was enormous, and now it looks much smaller. You think it’s because you grew, but it’s really a shift in perspective, a reminder that what feels big today may one day feel small. We grow, we learn, we experience.

As kids, the personas we imagined, the society we thought we had to navigate, the professional roles we saw ahead, all looked like the top of a mountain. It was like the old mobile game Snake, at the beginning you are a tiny snake moving freely in a rectangular world, taking bite after bite of bricks that felt like burdens yet each one makes you instantly bigger. You think, now I’m big, now the parental and godlike figures can’t rule me so easily, and the more bites you take, the larger you get.

At first there is plenty of space, moving is easy, but with time you notice how the space shrinks because you became the bigger snake. And what game is fun if you can’t lose your life, the thrill comes from the possibility of failing. As you grow you get more anxious about biting yourself and losing the game, leaving you with the feeling you fell by your own doing.

We forget that the rectangular world we moved in was always predefined. Even when you feel like you crossed its borders and get a moment of relief, you only appear again from the other side, back into the same space, frustrated, until one day you lose the game by biting yourself.

Life often looks like this game, but it shouldn’t. We forget the message hidden in those early feelings, that growing is not about consuming more bites, and our world is not meant to stay inside a rectangle.

© Paradoxus