Alright, let’s talk about something that stuck with me from League of Legends. It’s that line, you know, the one that goes something like “die to rise again”. I remember hearing it, probably from one of the champs, maybe Aatrox? Can’t quite recall exactly who says it or the precise wording, but the core idea, die to rise again, really lodged itself in my head.
At first, yeah, it just sounded cool. Edgy, game-y. You die in lane, you respawn, you try again. Simple enough in the context of Summoner’s Rift. You get ganked, make a bad play, face-check a bush you shouldn’t have… boom, grey screen. But then you’re back. You maybe buy smarter, play safer, or coordinate better with your team. You learn, or you should learn, from that ‘death’.
Getting Knocked Down
But then, life happens, right? Outside of the game. I went through a period, a while back, where things just weren’t clicking. Felt like I was hitting wall after wall. Not gonna bore you with the nitty-gritty details, but it was rough. Felt like I was constantly getting knocked down, failing at stuff I was putting real effort into. It was frustrating, made me wanna just… stop trying, honestly.
I remember thinking about that quote then. Not in a literal sense, obviously. But the idea… ‘dying’ felt like failing, like hitting rock bottom with a project or a personal goal. It felt like the end of that particular attempt. That feeling of defeat, the metaphorical ‘grey screen’ where you just feel powerless for a bit.
The ‘Rising Again’ Part
So, what did I do? Well, for a bit, not much. Wallowed a little, maybe played some actual League to distract myself. But the quote kept echoing. ‘Die to rise again’. Okay, so the ‘dying’ part happened. What about the ‘rising’? That wasn’t just going to happen automatically like respawning in a game.
This took actual effort:
- First, I had to actually accept the ‘death’, the failure. Stop making excuses or blaming everything else. Just own it. Okay, that didn’t work. I messed up here, and here.
- Then, I started picking apart why it didn’t work. What went wrong? What could I have done differently? Like reviewing a VOD of a bad game, but for life stuff.
- Next came the hard part: getting back up. Forcing myself to try again, but differently this time. Using what I learned from the screw-up. It wasn’t a big, glorious phoenix moment like in the movies. It was slow. Grinding. Trying small things, adjusting, sometimes failing again, but smaller failures this time.
It was a process. A clumsy, sometimes painful process. But each time I forced myself to get back up and apply the lessons from the last ‘death’, I felt a little stronger, a little smarter. I wasn’t just respawning; I felt like I was leveling up, slowly.
Now, I wouldn’t say I actively seek out failure, nobody wants that. But when setbacks happen, and they always do, that quote pops into my head. It reframes things. Okay, this is the ‘die’ part. It sucks. But it’s not the end. It’s the setup for the ‘rise again’ part. It reminds me that failure is temporary, and it’s only truly failure if you don’t get back up and learn something from it. It’s become a weird little mental tool I use to push through tough spots. Just gotta embrace the respawn timer and come back stronger.
