The written loom

The other day, I opened a small online game.. Nothing serious, just the kind of game people play when their brain needs ten minutes of rest after a long day.. No strategy.. No competition.. No real rewards.. Just colorful blocks, little challenges, and the satisfying sound of things breaking apart.. The kind of game that asks almost nothing from you, which is perhaps why it can reveal so much.. Sometimes the mind loosens most in places that seem trivial..

The goal was simple.. Each level gave me a specific task.. Break five bricks.. That’s it.. Not twenty-five.. Not everything on the screen.. Just five bricks..

The instruction could not have been clearer, and still I felt an almost immediate pull to complicate it.. There is something in me, and I suspect in many of us, that has trouble leaving a straightforward thing alone. If a task is defined, manageable, and contained, part of me starts scanning for the hidden catch, the extra layer, the part I must have missed.. It is strangely hard to believe that five bricks might really mean five bricks..

The problem was that I immediately started trying to do much more than that.. There were ice blocks too.. And chains.. And obstacles.. And various things scattered around the board that looked as though they should be dealt with.. They sat there with the quiet authority of unfinished business, and I responded exactly the way I often do in life: by assuming that anything visible must also be urgent. If it was on the board, surely it was my responsibility. Surely I was supposed to leave the whole thing neat and resolved before moving on..

So instead of focusing on the five bricks, I found myself trying to clear everything.. The game never asked me to.. I volunteered..

That, more than anything, made me pause. No one had assigned me the extra burden. No rule required it. I had simply stepped forward and claimed it as mine. It was such a familiar reflex that I almost missed how absurd it was. How often do we do that without noticing? How often do we turn a small obligation into a test of character?

Then I noticed something else.. The game kept giving me help like.. Little boosters.. Butterflies.. Special tools designed to make the level easier.. And what did I do? .. I saved them!!!!

“Not now,” I thought. “I might need them later.”

Later, apparently, was a magical future that never arrived. A future level that would surely be harder, more deserving, more justified. So I held back the useful thing in my hand for the sake of an imagined moment ahead. There is a particular kind of caution that disguises itself as wisdom, when really it is just reluctance to receive ease while it is available..

So there I was: surrounded by help I refused to use, solving problems nobody had asked me to solve, while ignoring the one thing that actually mattered..

At some point I laughed.. Because I realized I wasn’t playing a game anymore.. I was watching myself.. Not in some harsh or condemning way. More in the quiet, slightly embarrassing way you recognize your own habits when they appear outside of their usual setting. Sometimes it takes something small and harmless to show us a pattern we have been defending for years. There it was in bright colors and cartoon sound effects: my habit of overcomplicating, postponing relief, and mistaking unnecessary effort for responsibility.

How many times do we do this in real life? The day asks for five things.. We turn it into fifty..

A conversation requires honesty.. We add anxiety, overthinking, imaginary outcomes, and three future disasters that haven’t happened. We bring emotional weather to moments that asked only for presence. We enlarge simple tasks by surrounding them with interpretation, fear, and the pressure to get everything right at once. And then we call ourselves overwhelmed, without always noticing how much of that weight we added by hand..

• Someone offers help.. We politely decline..
• A tool exists.. We save it for later..
• An easier path appears.. We choose the difficult one because we’ve somehow convinced ourselves that struggle is proof of virtue. As if ease must be earned by first exhausting ourselves. As if doing something directly, simply, or with support would make the effort less respectable. There is a quiet pride hidden inside unnecessary difficulty, and it can be hard to recognize because it often wears the face of discipline.

Meanwhile, life keeps repeating the same instruction:

• Just break the five bricks.
• Not the ice.
• Not the chains.
• Not every obstacle visible on the horizon.
• Just the thing that was actually asked of you.

There is real mercy in that, if we are willing to hear it. Not everything in front of us is ours to fix today. Not every complication deserves our attention. Some things can remain unfinished for now without becoming failure. Some things are only background noise, even if they are loud. The task is not to clear the whole board of existence before we are allowed to rest. The task is to do what this moment requires, and to let that be enough..

The funny thing is that the game didn’t care about how much extra work I did.. The score didn’t matter.. My effort didn’t matter.. The only thing that mattered was completing the objective..

There is something both humbling and freeing in that. The world does not always reward the performance of strain. We can spend hours wrestling with side problems, perfecting details no one needed, carrying burdens no one handed us, and still the essential question remains unchanged: did we do the actual thing? Not the impressive thing. Not the exhausting thing. The actual thing.

And I wonder how often life works exactly the same way.. Perhaps we exhaust ourselves because we are trying to finish levels we were never assigned.. Perhaps the help we’ve been saving is meant to be used now.. Perhaps the day in front of us is smaller than we think. Smaller, more specific, and more forgiving. Maybe it does not need to be conquered. Maybe it only needs to be met. There is a difference between being responsible and being consumed, and many of us learned that difference late, if at all..

Five bricks.. Not one hundred and fifteen.. Just five..

There is relief in saying that plainly. Relief in reducing the shapeless mass of everything down to the few things that are actually ours for today. Not forever. Not for the entire future. Just for now. Just for this level.. And then tomorrow can worry about its own level..

Maybe growing older is not learning how to do more.. Maybe it’s finally learning how to do only what the level actually requires. To stop turning every ordinary day into a private endurance test. To accept help while it is here. To leave some ice unbroken. To let some chains remain on the board. To trust that completion and total control are not the same thing.

Maybe wisdom is smaller than we imagine.. Maybe it looks like this:

• Read the instruction.
• Use the help.
• Do the task.
• Leave the rest.
• Five bricks.
• Then stop!

Tatiana,