Yesterday my eldest and I had a conversation over Minecraft. To those who don’t know me, Minecraft has become strangely connected to peace and meditation for me. I listen to Buddhist lectures when I play alone and when I play with the kids it always ends up in some manner of philosophical conversation. Yesterday we fell upon the subject of finished projects. The boys are suddenly into pixel art and spent their available free time this weekend scouring the web for video instructions on how to make images of their favorite characters using Minecraft blocks. The eldest found a set of videos of people who made elaborate 28 hr projects. At the end of one such project the creators blew up the entire thing. He lost his mind. When he asked me about it I explained that it didn’t matter what they did after they saw the finished work, because they were already finished. This took additional time to explain.
The boy is working through his own 20+ hour project and could not grasp how, after all that work, they could just blow it to bits–having no lasting piece of it to peruse at their leisure. On the surface I understand his confusion. However, that confusion is only surface. I first related the situation to gaming. I asked him about the games he plays and how he gets his character better and better in pursuit of beating the end boss. Then I asked him what he does with the game after he beats it. He leaves it alone, of course. So then what is the best part of the game? Is it the battle at the end? After a while he admitted that he enjoys playing the game and experiencing the quest and the build up to the boss battle. In other words, he appreciates the journey.
In games, in writing, and in general life itself it is moreso about the journey than it is about the destination. Too often we are concerned with the achievement of completing something and marking that notch on our belt or affixing that badge to our legend. Still what is a notch or a badge but a signifier to tell someone else that we did something. What we keep is the experience of doing what we love. The greatest stories are not of the end boss battle but of the journey to get there.