Existential Lessons From Super Mario

My mom is addicted to life advice. The one you read on Facebook, Chicken Soup for the Soul and whatnot. She’s 68 years old and wants to hear one thing and one thing only: that she’s been living her life wrong all these years.

Because of that, I have a conflicted relationship to wisdom in general. I’ve learned how to recognize charlatans and purveyors of feel good smut at a young age, but craved wisdom in weird and unlikely cultural outlets nonetheless. Things accused of dumbing down generations: Sylvester Stallone movies, heavy metal music and whatnot. One of these things being video games.

Video games have a lot of wisdom to offer and they’ve have for longer than we think. Before they had intricate storytelling, video games offered mechanics that imitated or allegoried human life. My favorite being one of the first I ever played: Super Mario. Say what you want about the basic bitch of the 8 and 16-bit eras, but I had a borderline mystical relationship to it. Especially to Super NES’ bundled exclusive Super Mario World.

The fat Italian plumber taught me more about life than he would’ve expected himself. It’s because of him that platforming became a quasi-religious experience to me. An experience that thought me a lot about myself and how to interact with the world in general. Bless her soul, but more than my mom did. So, today I’m going to share invaluable existential lessons I’ve learned from Mario and his weird, boundless extended family.

Because you can learn from him too.

Embrace Failure

Failure is a normal part of life. Whatever endeavor it is you’re undertaking, it is unlikely to work on the first try. If you’re unaware of the obstacles that lie ahead, it’s likely they’re going to fuck you up. Super Mario falls into holes ans get run over by goofy looking creatures all the time. The further he advances on his path, the more fucked up he gets. Doesn’t matter to him because he doesn’t have anything better to do.

You are going to fail in life. You are going to fail at lot if you want to become successful. It’s part of a pattern recognition process. Sure, there are people who get it right on the first try. The further these people go, the harder they’ll get hit by their first failure and you don’t want that person to be you. Familiarize yourself with failure. It’s going to happen a lot.

Don’t let failure define you

You’re going to fail a lot. There’s no way around it. But the meaning of that failure entirely becomes to you. Because the only consequence of failure (aside from self-explanatory life endangering stuff) is that you’ll have to start over. You’ll start over at the beginning of the stage if you still have lives and you’ll start over at the beginning. It happens and whatever it is you make it, guess what? It’s not the end of the world. It’s frustrating and time-consuming, but it’s fine.

Shutting off the console and walking away is your decision. The only thing that’s going to happen if you don’t is that you’ll a) complete the game or b) start it over and over again until you do and eventually, muscle memory will carry you through it. Failure don’t mean shit if you don’t let it. Super Mario has the ability to dust off his overall and start over as many times as need be. The only outcomes are success or abandon.

Greatness comes in bursts

The people you look up to and one fat Italian plumber have understood something: you cannot be indestructible all the time. It comes in bursts and the best you can do is understand the conditions in which these bursts are bound to happen. Super Mario finds stars, tails and fire-breathing flowers that grant him terrifying powers along the way, but they don’t last forever. The idea is to find a maximum amount of them along your path.

Don’t wait for enlightenment to find you, choose you and stick with you forever. This isn’t how these things work. Those in a perpetual state of enlightenment have found a way to speed run while never running out of stars when other people are looking. The’re not constantly in star status. Work on finding starts and wrecking as much shit up as you can while you’re lit and not at finding a star that never runs out. These simply don’t exist.

Be fine with being Luigi

Every year or so, I do a Super Mario World playthrough using Luigi. The idea is the following: it doesn’t matter who you are and what you represent if you’re getting the job done. The endgame will be the same. If you neutralize Bowser, Wario or whoever’s in front of you and save the princess, YOU’RE going to be the man, whether your face is on the box and your name is in the title or not. Tim Duncan is not LeBron James, but he has more titles than him.

Because he gets the job done.

Don’t worry about anything, except getting the job done. There’s only one Mario and there’s an entire cast of support character starting with Luigi. You’re going to be someone’s Luigi and being someone’s B option means you have an opportunity to show what you can do. Doesn’t matter if you’re Mario, Luigi, Toad or Princess Peach. What matter is whether or not you can save the day. Choose to be Luigi. In all likeliness, it’s what you are to somebody else.