But in the end

“But in the end, it doesn't even matter”

I knew someone, let’s call him ‘Al’, who was caught in a negative spiral of questioning the meaning of his own life. He never laughed with joy, and rarely even smiled. I think I finally decided to just avoid the guy when he told me that he was convinced that not only his life, but all of existence was completely meaningless. As a relatively healthy individual, I have to say that he had a terrible way of looking at life, but that philosophy does have its merits when used to question the reasons a person uses to justify playing computer games excessively.

When I was hooked on WoW, we had a funny expression for when someone was obsessed with collecting epics (powerful weapons and armour in WoW), called “purple fever”. A person with purple fever had defined success to be what their character possessed, and so had made it their primary goal to get the most powerful in-game items they could. For example, a player with purple fever who liked to play a warrior-tank in Vanilla-WoW would probably have wanted full Tier 3 armour from Naxxramus. It was incredibly difficult to get, but can you imagine what that person would do with their character once they had got all the best weapons and armour (and the froth had cleared from their lips)? Well I can tell you, as I once saw a full Tier 3 warrior-tank being played during a Naxx raid, though the original player of that character had quit the game!

You see, the player who had developed that character, had donated his account to his old guild as a farewell gift. That person had loved playing Vanilla-WoW PvE raids in the role of a warrior-tank. However, once they had fully decked out their tank with everything they could ever get, there was nothing left to strive for. And so they had quit.

I believe that what can light a person’s core/heart/soul/spirit on fire with a blazing passion, is the pursuit of something meaningful, where “meaningful” is what a person believes to be meaningful. I don’t see there being an “absolute meaning” to the Universe, but rather we define the meaning in each of our individual lives by ourselves. One of the reasons I think I stopped playing WoW was because I decided that the goal of acquiring all of the best weapons and armour for my character was ultimately pointless. Anyone who ever got everything they had ever wanted in that game, just ended up quitting and moving on to better things. And so it simply made sense to question myself as to why I was striving for those same ultimately pointless goals.