/articles/forever_world

so much of my time earlier in life was spent playing modded minecraft on an old mid-range office laptop. it was really the only thing i'd play on my computer, versions 1.6.2 and 1.6.4 being my favourites. i'd scroll through 9minecraft, download whatever caught my eye (which was probably very unsafe lol) to try out in a single player world, making showcase areas as if i were a youtuber.

lately, life has felt heavy in a way i can barely explain. stress keeps arriving from every direction and each day moves faster while i'm lagging behind. when i feel overwhelmed, my mind drifts to old memories. i dream of a not much better past, but where awareness was softer, where the weight of responsibility hadn't settled in yet.

but the present keeps pushing and i keep trying to understand it. i've grown used to pulling back from myself when things get too intense. abstracting my own emotions into something i can observe. it helps in some ways, but it also makes me feel untethered, like i'm watching my own life through a window instead of living inside it.

so i decided, as a sort of last resort attempt, not expecting much from it, to ground myself in something familiar: i started a new 1.6.4 world with the same mods i loved: NEI, the backpack mod, the paxel mod and iChun's portal gun and morph mods. i'd be lying if i said it felt the same, but that's to be expected. i'm only emulating what once was.

despite all the hours i've spent as a child playing the game, i've never actually learned how to play it properly. or perhaps i've forgotten. i found myself exploring aimlessly, gathering ores and food but never actually settling. eventually i carved a small shelter into the side of a hill to put my bed and whatever workbench-type blocks i had. i've never really been good at building in minecraft, maybe that's why i always chose to integrate my base with the surrounding terrain.

after that, i set out again, though this time i had an objective: to craft a portal gun, which requires me to beat the wither, so i went looking for diamonds. caves in minecraft are really claustrophobic in older versions compared to the current ones, i had forgotten what a chore it was to reach lower levels of the world without directly interacting with it. though i found a few overlapping ravines which got me to y=11, as the old standard for mining for diamonds was, where i started strip-mining and soon found my first diamonds.

funnily enough, they were right next to a vein of redstone ore, an old myth, but having been playing for a few hours now, being left alone with my thoughts over minecraft's melancholic soundtrack and sounds, i couldn't help but see a parallel. in life, we should always strive to be rational, to move clearly and with steadiness, even when it's painful. for the rational path always comes to beauty. redstone, in its own way, feels like a symbol of reason, being the item that lets you move on to some sort of primitive "industrial age" in the game. and diamonds are, well, diamonds. something brilliant, rare and beautiful. and there they were next to each other, similarly to how reason leads us to beauty. of course, the myth isn't true, but the coincidence is beautiful.

i'll try to keep this world going. maybe turn it into a forever world. maybe i'll even write updates regarding it. what's sure is that it fulfilled it's purpose. it helped me cool off even if just for a few hours. it helped me reflect and perceive myself and my experiences as they are, instead of from the perspective of a spectator.

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