The Health Potion Dilemma

You don’t often realize how important certain parts of your childhood were until you yourself are raising kids through those same periods. I’ve learned, over the past few years, how much playing certain video games influenced my ability to manage resources, plan long term, and keep my house stocked and organized in a way that makes sense to me. It is in these same games however, that I often encountered a problem. Enter Vilverin (yes I had to look the name up, but was able to find it quickly on a map of Tamriel since I have developed map reading skills, also from video games?). Those of us, who are or once were nerds will know what I’m talking about, but if you don’t, it doesn’t matter. In this first cave, dungeon, area of peril, you likely don’t have resources, as you are just starting the game. You also don’t have the necessary skills or the confidence to navigate the dangers therein for the same aforementioned reason. This made childhood Matt, very careful, since, of course, you can’t die and entering every dangerous scenario with full health seemed a very sensible way to mitigate risk. In this dungeon, you’d be likely to find a health potion and you are just as likely to also have learned a basic healing spell. Lastly, like most games, your health would slowly go up if you waited and did nothing or found a safe spot to rest. So here I am, maybe 14 or 15 years old, having just navigated through the first obstacle, maybe killed some skeletons or something, and I am injured. I have a health potion, maybe even two or three. They work instantly but are finite. I can stand there and heal myself, little bits at a time with my spell, or I can wait. These later two options would take at least 3-5 mins real world time (if I am remembering correctly). Guess which path this underdeveloped brain would take. Unfortunately to say, I have spent an embarrassingly long amount of time in my life, tucked into a corner in Vilverin, healing myself or waiting for my health to regenerate instead of using the health potions.

Fast forward, after a few weeks/months of playing this game, I still have health potions, maybe too many of them since I used them so sparingly. What did I gain from saving these items that seem precious, yet so effective at solving a problem instantly? Since it was a video game, there was no real loss of entertainment by doing this. My memories of this are just as fond as they would have been had I used the potions. The health potion dilemma doesn’t seem to be a dilemma at all.

Fast forward further into adulthood, home ownership, a career, child rearing, what have you. How has this learned habit influenced my ability to use resources? Well I can tell you that I have resued quite a few nearly striped screws. I didn’t realize it, but it has changed my baseline point of view when considering the use of resources.This dilemma has set me up for an adult life lived entirely from a scarcity mindset. You only have so much energy, you only have so much time, there is only so much X so you better save it for a time when you really need it. You accumulate stuff that you might use. You skip plans, and save energy for things you deem important. Some might call this behavior frugal, since in part, it is, however certain instances of it seem to be more unhealthy. Scarcity makes sense to humans, since at our base level, a lot of our biology is set up for survival. Without scarcity, humanity as a whole would not be where we are today.

For those of us living a middle class life, in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet scarcity is still a celebrated quality. Look at how efficient this person is. Look how many health potions they have. Scarcity is really risk mitigation controlled by fear of failure. If you enter every situation as prepared, as rested, as fed, as educated, as you can possibly be, then your chances of success are higher. That also makes your chances of learning much lower. Yes, it is safer, but at what cost. How much life experience are you missing by being prepared, by being safe? If you abandon the scarcity mindset and think of things as abundant, as not what am I missing, but what do I have, you might find that when you use those three health potions to get through Vilverin, you find five more on the way and have a much more enjoyable time. Or maybe you use those three potions and still die, but that’s ok, because you are still learning to play the game and the best ways to navigate these novel scenarios.

Scarcity and abundance exist on a pendulum that must swing back and forth to maintain a healthy life practice and perspective. Sometimes you need to save, sometimes you need to spend. Saving might mean safely. Spending might mean failure. Safely is not synonymous to growth. Failure is not synonymous to death. Give yourself enough risk opportunities to grow and enough safe opportunities to recover. Finding this balance can give the 21st century human a great base for a fulfilling life. Next time you find yourself with a health potion dilemma, in a game, or in life, ask yourself “What do I have to lose if I use it?” but also “What do I have to lose if I save it?”