Recently, I’ve been getting back into playing a game called Hyrule Warriors specifically the definitive edition. It’s a Zelda game where you are a part of an army fighting for your kingdom (or against the kingdom) by beating back the opposing army. You can take bases, defeat captains, and more depending on your mission. I enjoy the game because it’s a montage of all my favorite Zelda characters and I enjoy the different strategies you have to think of in order to win.
One of the storyline missions I recently played required seizing the Palace of Twilight. Whenever you advance, your enemy tries to halt your course whether by trapping you so you have to find a specific item to get out or sending assault troops to take your bases or capture your allies. It often feels like there’s a lot of chaos on the map at all times. You can’t be everywhere at once so you have to decide what’s most important. Do you save your ally? Take that base? Stay and defend your keep? Meanwhile, the characters are having dialogue at the bottom of the screen, and some of it tells you how to move on, so while you’re in the middle of handle the mess, you have to pay attention to what your allies are saying to each other.
I get so far into the mission that my army covers the entire map except for enemy base. The leader of the enemy army gets desperate. He summons a dragon and while my allies and I are taking care of the dragon, he decides to come out of his base and join the fighting.
I used to play this game a lot when it first came out on the Wii-U game system. I know how the characters fight. I know how to beat the dragon and the other bosses in the game. Starting over, all my fighters reset to level 1. Their power isn’t that strong. Defeating the dragon was taking a while. Then, this enemy commander arrives and starts poking at me with his swords. With my focus on the dragon, he’s able to mess up my combos. He was quickly becoming a nuisance.
This was the final mission of the map. Defeat the dragon and defeat the enemy commander in their last desperate attempt to beat you. I knew I was going to win. I knew it was just a matter of time, but this enemy commander poking into the fight with the dragon was beyond getting on my nerves. I had to switch tactics. Stick to short and sweet attacks–which only made the fight take longer–but at least I was making more progress then starting a combo only for it to get cut short.
Eventually, I beat the dragon and the fight with the commander ended quickly after that. It was a victory. The result I expected, and yet, I still got mad going through the mission.
It made me wonder how many little things in life do we get mad or annoyed with when we know the outcome anyway? Say you’re on track for a promotion. You know you’re going to get it, but these little things pop up that you have to take care of first. Maybe you have to interview? Maybe you’re in line for a job and they make you go through the process anyway? Maybe there’s a dream that you know you’ll accomplish, but the road to it is filled with potholes and rocky hills before you finally get there.
How many times do we go through life knowing how it’s going to end, knowing we’ll have victory, and yet we still let the little things get to us. We let them poke at our side until we’re so annoyed we want to pound them into the dirt.
I believe there’s victory for us at the end of this long battle of life. We just have to remember it.
Because, when you know you’re going to win anyway, life can be easier to handle.
nikki diekemper 