To Brave Existential Crises

A sparknoting strategy guide to the most arresting game you’ve ever played

Introduction

This guide is meant to serve as a companion during your journey through existential crises. Please rest assured in understanding your venture doesn’t have to be pursued alone. The experience and wisdom of users like you make up the advice compiled here. There is a community of people, past and present, fighting beside you, forging their own path through the same facet of the human condition.

At no point contained below will you find spoilers about what exactly you’ll encounter, sure explanations for what brought you here, nor imperatives or rules of play. This is a game best explored with your own compass.

While you certainly didn’t pay to acquire it, the Creator(s) of this game was kind enough to grace us all with the necessity to play it. Therefore, as a matter of universal necessity, it must be played.

On behalf of our team and the breadth of humankind, we hope that you find this manual comforting, empowering, and most of all useful.

Stay grounded, employ your weapons strategically, and trust your long-term foresight.

Good luck.

Getting Started

The first step to defeating the enemy is to understand what it is.

Existential Crisis: A crisis evolved from the aspect of ontology, or being. Such is known to bewilder victims with self-directed questions regarding the meaning, purpose, and value of their existence. Feelings of depression and anxiety commonly leech on to their wake when users struggle to meet such questions with satisfactory answers.

What to Expect

Existential crises are insidious adversaries fit to distort logic, mangle emotions, and deceive your sights fore and hind. They disguise unsound behavior as sound and make hasty decisions look prudent.

Among the most unfortunate examples of these effects are those in which a user unknowingly descends deeper into ontological darkness. Such is the impact of dangerous elixirs like alcohol and volatile reactions to unrelated stress.

How Long to Expect It

The game is known to last anywhere from moments to minutes or months. How long it does depends on the methods with which you choose to confront it. Users must deploy strategies that work for them.

The rules of engagement are simple; however, users prone to navigational error — such as those fooled by hasty logic, thirsty for the temporary benefits of libations, or resigned to paralysis by analysis — will follow beaten paths astray, thereby delaying their progress.

Successful Expectations

Completing the journey through an existential crisis may reveal itself in a few ways: clarity of mind and logic, emotional stability, voluntary adaptation, higher levels of confidence or self-esteem, the willingness and ability to move on from the game, and the like. The Field Manual below will shed some light on how to get there.

Field Manual

The Origins of Crisis

The moment at which a crisis begins to take shape occurs under markedly proverbial circumstances. Such are those described as “pivots” in the human experience toward new vantage points of life. Typically, the emotions that accompany them are feelings of a previous or imminent burden. As time proceeds, these feelings take a more definite shape, revealing the very adversary you must confront.

Though the form with which it chooses to confront us may not be identical to all, many accounts recall similar experiences. The following list is not exhaustive, but it illustrates the kinds of circumstances under which the game begins:

Taking on a new career/job

Buying a home or moving to a new neighborhood

Moving away to college

Getting married

Having Children

Getting divorced

Retirement

Traumatic experience

Loss of a loved one

Living through a pandemic

Accomplishing none or all, of your goals

Diagnosis of a life-threatening illness

Etc.

Navigational Strategy

Assigning a universal strategy to conquer a crisis born from each of the conditions above would be beyond this guide’s ambition. However, each contains common elements of conflict that make them up. Seizing crises by these elements might improve your chances of defeating them.

For example, depending upon a user’s sentiment, settling into a new job or moving away to college might entail the element of fear. Undergoing a divorce or getting fired may yield anger. And if the success of accomplishing your life’s goals or reaching retirement soon makes you unhappy, your confrontation might include a lost sense of purpose.

While these emotions may be warranted, be wary.

The game tempts the unsuspecting into believing finding another purpose doesn’t exist, and the days between this one and your final ones will be meaningless. It’s known to turn fear into self-doubt and transform anger into rash decision-making.

The key to a successful navigational strategy is to dig beneath the enemy’s surface to uncover the elements that keep it alive. Battling a crisis shaped as having children runs deeper than the idea of merely raising them. Users may experience fear, stress, and anxiety surrounding specific aspects of raising children, getting divorced, or moving to a new neighborhood. Unearthing these common elements will prove elemental in alleviating your swelling burden.

Combating the enemy requires considerable effort, but taking steps to parse out their infrastructure will help determine the weaponry best equipped to oppose them.

Weaponry

Forms of weaponry are many. With deliberate thought and preparation, deploying the right ones can yield devastating effects. Any strategy sourced from the armory will be as unique as your assessment of the enemy. Two users experiencing the challenges of the same enemy will not necessarily choose the same weaponry. A few likely to aid your journey are the following:

Exercise

A healthy body bears a healthy mind. Take it from Harvard Medical School, which cites studies proving the mental benefits of regular exercise. For an extra boost of clarity, they also suggest a cup of coffee before you get moving.

Possible Assets: self-esteem, self-confidence, lucid thought, physical health, increased appetite, better sleep

Self-Reflection/Mindfulness

Taking a moment to step back, breathe, and calm your nerves into relaxation is an excellent starting point from which to begin the process of breaking down the enemy to its basic parts. If possible, take a full day or the weekend — all to yourself, in only the company of yourself. You may need time to reset.

Possible Assets: temperance, lucid thought, self-control, patience, self-esteem, sensibility

Communication & Seeking Support

Keep open lines of communication between yourself and those in closest proximity to you and your crisis. If you feel a professional network would be more suitable for your crusade, there are many local and virtual options available.

Possible Assets: social support, familiarity, emotional validation, self-confidence, intimacy, professional insight

Reconnect to Old or Strengthen Existing Relationships

Bearing the weight of personal obstacles can feel isolating. Reconnecting with an old friend or strengthening your relationship with an existing one should help bring you closer to the comforts of familiarity and intimacy.

Possible Assets: belonging, closeness, intimacy, social support, validation

Set the Pace According to You

Rushed decisions and hasty action drag along stressful, unnecessary weight. Insofar as the enemy is yours alone to confront, don’t let anyone dictate the pace but you. This is your journey. Traverse it at your own speed.

Possible Assets: self-confidence, rationality, temperance, patience, sound thinking

Here in Support

While weapons to engage the beast extend in number and variety, be leery of snake oils meant to lead you astray. What appears to provide a haven of relief may, in fact, be a trojan horse of suppression.

Examples include unabashed amounts of alcohol, drugs, adultery, hasty decisions, late-night phone calls, and Elliot Smith’s greatest hits. To name but a few, users continue desperately chasing alternatives to battle by seeking insatiable amounts of temporary comfort. Temporary comforts have proven to be no match for a crisis. Those reluctant to forbid them may descend deeper into its clutches.

The pursuit of bringing down our greatest existential enemy is a noble one. From novices to legends, understanding the enemy may be simple, but employing the right tactics can take a lifetime to master.

May you trail the drafts of those before you, cast your sail toward insurgent winds, and till the seeds of your well-being to brave existential crises.