12 Everything I Needed to Know About the Helping Profession, I Learned from the
12 Everything I Needed to Know About the Helping Profession, I Learned from the Legend of Zelda
There’s a classic video game series called The Legend of Zelda that many of you will be familiar with. Even if you are not familiar with the games, or you’ve never played a video game in your life, I think the points here will still be well taken.
Most of the games in the Zelda series have a similar rhythm to them. They begin with a rather slow grind through a large, unfamiliar world. Your hero, named Link in the series, begins with almost no abilities, a shabby set of clothes, and a sense of being almost overwhelmed with the task ahead of him. However, he also greets the world with a kind of raw naivete and ambition that allows him to dive head-first into any obstacle he faces.
It’s easy to see how this game serves as a useful metaphor for life, and I think particularly for the field we have all chosen to work in. As new helpers, we are faced with almost insurmountable odds: a system with deep flaws, colleagues with a deep sense of weariness, and clients with deep wounds. We ourselves often bring many scars into the battle with us. And those early days and months in our work can feel like the slow grind of Link searching everywhere for allies, tools, and those tricks of the trade that help us all succeed.
As you might have guessed, I have played most of the Zelda games at some point in my life, and I find my own reaction to them is similar each time. Upon first beginning, I face the game with a sense of excitement and the belief that I will be able to conquer everything within the game eventually. However, it takes many hours of gameplay just to establish a few basic skills and begin to get a sense of the world that you’re in.
I find I hit a wall around that point where I question how much investment I actually want to put into the game. Is it worth all of this struggle? And then as I push through a little further, I start to gain a bit of traction. The game is still not easy at this point. In fact, the difficulty of the game typically has risen in concert with my newfound abilities. I find that I have just enough confidence and willingness to keep going a little further, to invest a bit more time and energy into seeing what comes next.
One of the player’s major, perhaps most important, assets is sheer curiosity. As you explore more spaces, talk to more people, experiment with what your character can do, the game rewards you. You. You make new discoveries that make the journey a little easier, and a little more fun. This in turn propels you forward into the next battle or exploration of a new territory.
After a significant amount of time has passed, literally dozens of hours. In the case of most of these games, you finally feel a sense of having mastered the craft of playing the game. You know when to fight and when to run. You know where to find the items you need to help your character. You understand the lay of the land and both literally and figu