I’m a nerd at heart and want to stay true to myself.
So let’s talk about Dungeons & Dragons.
D&D is a relatively new pastime of mine. It’s become this weekly chance for my friends and I to just sit down and forget about our troubles for a few hours and be the heroes of our own stories. As corny as it sounds, I draw parallels to my own life through games like this. The whole, “you’re the hero of your own story” ties into how I want to live my life.
So yeah. I’m asking you to follow along about how my life relates to a tabletop game with dragons and magic.
Buckle up.
For those uninitiated, you play D&D almost wholly within your mind. Your actions, personality and capabilities all lie within a sheet of paper and your imagination. You can be a swashbuckler or a knight. Maybe you’re the kind of weakling that decides to be a wizard that’s been told a million times NOT TO CHARGE HEADFIRST INTO THE ROCK TROLL.
Or you can be like me; an eight foot tall crocodile barbarian with two axes made out of the bones of his enemies. Your choice.
In the end, I tend to value strength in this game. But that can be a tricky one. You see, a couple weeks back we ran into a particularly nasty enemy to fight. The thing was pure evil and had to be put down by your friendly, neighborhood heroes. Like all great heroes do, we proceeded to beat the ever living crap out of it. Then something interesting happened.
I died.
Well, sort of.
At the end of the battle, the creature erupted and I just happened to be standing right next to it. My strong and fearless character was officially at zero health. In most games, this is where you throw the controller across the room and finally get some fresh air and sunshine. But this is D&D.
My character fell unconscious and had to roll these things called “death saving throw”. You get the opportunity to roll dice and resist dying right out. If you roll well, then your character “stabilizes”. If you roll poorly then I think you get the picture. You always have a chance to roll a few more times though, even when you fail the first time.
If you’re still with me, I feel like this can parallel my life over the past couple years. There have been moments where I was sure everything was all over, where my life was at the bottom of the proverbial barrel. But you’re never down and out completely, right? Every time I felt knocked on my feet by life putting me in my place, I’ve had to make those death saving throws. Sometimes you just have to keep rolling until one of them sticks.
You’ve done it too.
It’s a lot like my barbarian earlier. You kill the monster just in time to see it all fall apart. You collapse at a personal high in your life because it always finds a way to do it.
Here’s the thing though, sometimes when you find yourself on the floor with the world coming down around you, the people closest to you can lend a helping hand. Those death saving throws? They are completely unnecessary when someone from your D&D team comes along to help. In my life, every single time I’ve needed to roll the dice on surviving or not, someone has come along to help me.
Whether my world ends because of the death of my father or I’m so stressed I forget to eat, my friends and family have been there.
I guess if there’s a message to be found here, it’s that none of us are immune to falling flat on our face. You can be the biggest and meanest barbarian out there but something stronger always comes along to humble and remind you of your mortality. You’re stronger than you think, though.
You can stabilize.
Just keep throwing those dice whenever life hits you in the face, don’t ever stop. Use your friends and family. Do whatever it takes to keep afloat. Remember that just because you think, “this is it, the world is ending”…
It’s just another chance to pick yourself up and slay your dragons.
Meals & Monarch 