Riddle: You use me to teach and make decisions, I am what forms you, I can be both bad and good. I can make you grow, and I can sink you in the dark. What am I?
Knowledge is the fact or condition of being aware of something. You know which food is bad for you and which food is good for your health, you are aware of that. That doesn’t mean that you strictly follow that knowledge of yours, am I right? Because I don’t.
The good thing in life is that you chose what to do, in every aspect. You chose when to eat, you chose what to learn, how to feel, and you chose your faith, and better yet, you chose who to be.
You are capable of deciding who to be because of the knowledge you have. You live your life based on the things you know, and the things you don’t know.
Let’s begin with a simple example. You want to play a videogame, and you are aware that there are a lot of genres out there, like shooters, racing, simulations, puzzles, etc. You are also aware that you watch every Sunday the Formula 1 championship; in the game store you find the Formula 1 game, there is also a cool magic game, it teaches you how to do magic. Everyone loves magic. What would be your choice?
What makes the difference
You know who you are, or at least you are trying to know yourself. Every single day I try to get to know myself more and improve, you see, nobody knows everything, and that’s ok.
I admire the people who know themselves, cause it takes a lot.
There are doctors, farmers, professional gamers, and all kinds of people. That’s what they know, they know how to cure a person, they know how to plant vegetables, and they know how to play videogames professionally. That’s only their title and just a tiny part of who they are.
You are a professional gamer; you are aware that you love playing games, and you are good enough to compete for prizes and money.
You also know that you love growing sunflowers on your balcony, you’re afraid of spiders, and if you see one, you kill it. You love animals, so you volunteer at an animal shelter on the weekends, helping to care for small animals.
You see? There’s so much more to you than your title and what you’ve accomplished. It depends on what you know and what you don’t.
The role of Videogames in your life.
There’s the belief that videogames are bad for people, and a thought that videogames damage people. What do you think?
That’s not true, the only thing confirmed is that haters exist, they think videogames are bad because of their own feelings and emotions.
You have books, you have movies, you have videogames. What do they have in common?
They teach you things, they can be big things or small things, but every time you read a book, you watch a movie, or you play videogames, you learn something, you learn experiences of other people, you learn about life through other people’s minds. Sounds far for you?
Probably, in videogames, you learn about things you didn’t think you’d learn, but in the end, you know more stuff than you did before, and man, that’s what makes you, that awareness of things that you know is what let you define you and knowing who you are.
The more things you know about life, the more you try, the more activities you do, the more you communicate with other people. Do you think is good just to talk about what type of clothes you want to wear? Or who is your friend dating?; you see, that’s bullshit.
Will you believe me if I say, I learned how rusty strings make a guitar sound bad in a videogame?
That’s just a small example. There’s a game called Assassin’s Creed Unity, that game teaches you about The French Revolution. You could’ve liked it or not, but you’d never have known if you wouldn’t play it. If you do like it, you probably like history a lot, and if you don’t, you are not into history. With this in mind, you are a step closer to knowing yourself.
It’s about self-awareness and knowing what you like and what you don’t like, it’s being aware of the things you are good at, and the things you suck at. Knowing yourself it’s about keeping silent when you don’t know about a certain topic, knowing yourself it’s acceptance.
“Enjoy every day with kindness, loyalty, and wildness.”