Or: what I learned from playing too much DiRT Rally (one of my favourite rally racing games.)
So here’s the context: I’m playing “career mode”, in which I buy a car, hire a couple of engineers, and go out to race. In order to win the championship, I have to have the best time across six “stages” or legs. Each stage is located in a different place so they all have their peculiarities: different areas of easy and difficult sections, some more suitable to the car’s set-up than others.
The thing about the game is that unlike real life, you have an unlimited numbers of do-overs – if you crash your car or get a time you don’t fancy, you can simply restart the stage.
When I first started playing this game that’s what I did. A lot.
I was intent on always finishing first for each stage. If I didn’t manage to finish first I would restart the stage. At times I found myself playing each stage close to 30-50 times; some stages I would spend an hour or two on and still not have the fastest time.
Then one day there was a stage in which I just couldn’t be the first for no matter how many times I tried.
I gave up. For that stage I ended up 5th and I accepted it*. The following stages were not much better either, with me ending up no better than third.
* (Side-note: actually my saying I “accepted it” is not really true. It was more of just getting the championship over, closing this chapter of my life, and uninstalling the game.)
Of all six stages of the championship, I ended up winning none.
And yet *drullroll please* I won the championship.
“But how?” I asked myself. “How??”
I couldn’t quite believe it but the overall time I had was faster than all my competitors. I won by virtue of consistency and not completely fouling up. Those who had won a stage had performed poorly for at least one of the others.
To me this was revolutionary and extremely zen: I won not by winning; I won by consistently showing up.
Donn, fragments 