Life Lessons

Little Mouse's birthday was over the weekend, and one of the gifts she got was an "Action Replay"--a special cartridge for her hand-held video game machine (Nintendo DS for those of you in the know). Action Replay is a product that contains all the different "cheat codes" for the video games you can play on the DS, which means that she can get unlimited money or have already caught all the critters she's supposed to catch, or what have you.

So she eagerly entered all the cheat codes for her favorite game, and spent most of the day crowing at her brother, "Look, I've got this! And this!" and "Look, I've got enough money to buy this! I bet you've never gotten so much money!"

Saturday night, after she'd gone to bed (seriously over-tired from the very late night she had Friday, and the short nights Wednesday and Thursday when she was so excited about the impending birthday that she couldn't sleep), she came downstairs in tears and told me how terrible she felt about cheating in her game. She said she felt like she'd done something wrong, and that the game wasn't going to be any fun anymore because she already had everything, and what was the point of playing anymore?

I pulled her onto my lap and hugged her and told her she hadn't done anything wrong, but that maybe she'd learned something? We talked about how we need to have goals and challenges to keep things interesting, and that if you're just handed everything you ever wanted, it's hard to stay motivated to do anything because you have nothing to strive for...and how that's as true in life as it is in video games.

She said her game was ruined now, and that she was going to start over because it just wasn't any fun anymore. Then she dried her eyes and hugged me, and I walked her back upstairs and tucked her back into bed.

I was smiling as I walked back downstairs. What a great opportunity to teach an important life lesson. I hope she remembers it and takes something from it.

Writing Prompt: What is one of the important life lessons you have learned? How did you learn it? Did you realize at the time that it was a valuable learning experience, or did that understanding come later?