How Mario Kart helped me understand Stoicism
I’ve been playing Mario Kart since the first one came out for the Super Nintendo. I love the simplicity of the game; I learned how to play it before I could read books without pictures; at the same time, it is still exciting and challenging after years of playing and improving. Recently, I got Mario Kart 8 for my Nintendo Switch (I know I’m a bit behind). The first time I played the joy of years of Mario Kart on so many systems came flooding back. I was drifting through and boosting out of the corners, I was doing tricks on the jumps, I was holding shells to cover my butt. I was back and I loved it.
It didn’t take too many races and I realized that the biggest nemesis Mario Kart has ever created was still present. When you are in the lead in Mario Kart there is a sight that will instantly bring dread to any racer. It looks like this:
If you aren’t sure what you are looking at let me zoom in.
Maybe a little more?
For those of you that don’t know what this is, it is a diabolical shell with one purpose and one alone: Seek out and destroy whoever is in the lead. It is the bane of the 1st place racer. It doesn’t matter how far in the lead you are, how far back the person that shoots it is; when you see this little bubble with the blue shell in it you know that you are about to get wrecked. To make it even better, it doesn’t hit like the other shells in the game, that would be too easy. It goes off like a bomb, completely stopping you for a couple seconds, and making you lose all your items and coins.
Recently, I had this happen during the end of a close race. Those precious seconds meant instead of coming across the finish line first, I came behind three other racers. At that moment I was a bit angry and I felt 10 year old me urging me to throw the control and scream at the injustices of the world. I am sure my face turned a bit red and I know my blood pressure went up for a few seconds, but that was it, I did nothing more. I want to share with you what crossed my mind that helped me calm down because I believe that it can help with very insignificant things in life (like Mario Kart) as well as things that actually matter (like a job or relationship).
Nearly 1,900 years ago a man named Epictetus said “Some things are in our control, while others are not.” He also said “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own . . .”
The blue shell in Mario Kart is not something I can control. I can race a perfect race, make every turn just right, boost at all the right times, but if someone fires the blue shell I cannot do anything. The only thing I can do is expressed by Marcus Aurelius in two passages from Meditations. First, “Just do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter.” I just need to focus on doing what is right, not all the things I have no control over. Second, “Finish the job, methodically — without getting stirred up or meeting anger with anger.” Do the job that you started, the job you can do, and don’t get worked up about things when they don’t play out exactly as you think they should.
I’ve since thought a lot about the things I worry about, the things that keep me up at night, my stressors. How many of them do I have any control over? Or maybe a better question is what do I have control of related to this problem? I’ve been surprised, almost embarrassed to find that most of what I allow myself to be shaken by are things that I have little to no control over. Raining the day I was supposed to go for a hike; a project at work taking longer because a vendor wants to do another legal review; or my wife feeling sick the night we were supposed to go out to our favorite restaurant. I have no control over these events, however, there are things I can do. Go drive somewhere pretty and enjoy the sound of the rain; reach out to the vendor and understand their needs better; make my wife some soup and bond with her while handing her more tissues.
Too often we fill our lives with if only’s and had things been different’s. We give control of our happiness to things we cannot control. We hope things will work out just right for us, and when they don’t we despair. In life and in Mario Kart I can guarantee there will be blue shells. Things that sink, that make life harder than we’d wish it would be, but ultimately things that we have no control over.
What blue shells do you have in your life? What things make life a bit more cloudy for you that you really cannot change or control? Recognize them for what they are, blue shells, and don’t let them have power to bring you down. Also, what can you do? What is in your control? Do those things, do them more often, and see what happens in life.
