Some video games come with training levels. In a training level, it doesn’t matter how many times your character dies, how long it takes to complete a task, or how many attempts it takes to learn the controls. You can spend as much time there as you need to get a feel for everything before playing the actual game. Further, nothing that happens in those training levels affects regular gameplay, making them wonderful opportunities to learn how to play without adversely affecting the main game.
I’d love it if life itself had training levels. While there are a number of skills that can be learned and improved upon fairly quickly, others take years, decades, or even an entire lifetime. Costly mistakes made in certain key areas (parenting, business, relationships of all types, etc) can create problems that may linger for many years to come, and some might never go away. It’d be wonderful if there were training levels for life that allowed everyone to learn and master emotional intelligence, effective communication, social interactions, and other extremely challenging skills early on. If all of that were restricted to the training levels rather than regular life, that would prevent so many painful mistakes and regrets that almost everybody deals with.
Those training levels would be even better if they could be accessed at any time, whether someone is just starting out in life, needs a refresher later in life, or gets a quick boost somewhere in between. Imagine an extremely difficult situation that you’ve never faced before. When that happens in real life, lots of people freak out, fall back on bad habits that make the situation worse, and then feel upset about it for a long time afterward. Now imagine that same situation with a training level: you pause your life, go into a training level that covers this sort of thing, and work at it as much as you need to get a feel for it. Then you resume life, handle the situation extremely effectively, and move on feeling satisfied. No time wasted and no costly mistakes made. That’d be incredible. Parents would know exactly what to do for their kids at any given moment, business failures could be averted well in advance, healing conversations in all kinds of relationships would become the norm, and nothing damaging would ever be said or done in the heat of the moment.
Some people think that learning those lessons in life itself is an essential part of the journey. Even if they’re correct, having training levels would offer a version of that with much lower costs to failure. As an example, there’d be no more abusive relationships in real life where there is trauma, lasting regret, and other major issues since everything one would need to know about avoiding abusive relationships could be learned in a training level. And nobody would have to use those training levels if they didn’t want to. They’d be available for those wanting to learn how to live more effectively without making huge (and often lasting) mistakes, but anybody who wanted to avoid them could certainly do so.
I can’t imagine how much trouble I’d have avoided if I had access to life training levels. I’d have learned everything I now know about emotional intelligence and effective communication at a much younger age; either one of those by itself would have probably prevented the majority of my mistakes and saved many relationships of all sorts. Without my deep-seated emotional issues, I could have spent much more meaningful time with my loved ones, several of whom died either before I started getting the hang of healthy emotional management or shortly thereafter. I would have felt comfortable enough to have regular visits with several loved ones who are still alive instead of staying away for several years. I’m certain that my priorities would have been better arranged so that I’d have spent more time with my dog Sawyer during his life, especially in his final years, months, weeks, and days, instead of pursuing activities that left much to be desired. Any extra interactions I’d gotten with him and my other loved ones would have been even more wonderful due to more focus on the present moment, greater love, and less absentmindedness and fear.
It pains me that there are no such life training levels; that the many past mistakes I’ve made have negatively impacted my life and, in some cases, will continue to do so even if I never make another mistake again; and that, at least in this life, there will be no more opportunities to visit or make things right with my loved ones who’ve already died. I so wish none of those were true. All I can do is continue learning, healing, growing, and sharing my journey with those interested.
I’ve done practice essays, quizzes, and tests in school. The practice versions didn’t count for or against me, so if I did poorly on them, they didn’t hurt my grade. However, they always gave me an idea of how the actual assignments would be, showed me the parts I had under control, and highlighted areas that needed extra attention before I got to the real thing. Those were all hugely beneficial and were a large part of why I managed to do as well as I did in school. At this point, getting good at learning and finding ways to learn quickly are as close as I can get to life training levels. It’s not the same but it’s better than nothing.
I hope that, over time, more kids will learn healthy emotional management and effective communication. Early life is the perfect time to lay a solid foundation for life and, in a way, that phase acts as a big training level for what is to come. That seems to be the direction things are headed. Time will reveal if that will continue and how it will turn out.