#62 - Universal Themes - Part 1 - Change
Hello Readers,
Hope everyone has had a great week! Today I’m thinking about Nintendo and specifically Ocarina of Time and how the Themes of the dungeons or the main challenges make interesting comparisons to real life. So far as I was thinking about the major temples or places you go in this game, I was able to make some interesting analogies to what I believe are central themes that everyone experiences one way or another. Here’s my running list:
The Forest Temple represents = Change
The Fire Temple represents = Friendship
The Water Temple represents = Love
The Shadow Temple represent = Death
The Spirit Temple Represents = Struggle
The Light Temple represents = Celebration
And so today I want to embark on a journey with you reader and talk about a difficult concept which is: Change.
Change is the difficult transition, realization, or acceptance that life is moving forward and things are going to be different. Kids feel this as they are growing up. Adults realize this when they acknowledge they are no longer older. And at different stages of life, there are different moments where we realize that things have just well… changed.
As Link, now full grown Adult, embarks on the Forest Temple. He faces adulthood and the harsh reality that he has grown up and that his home environment and everything that he was accustomed to as a child has gotten different. And so you play as Link and he embarks across different aspects of this dungeons and even come across different ghosts that he must fight. There are puzzles, riddles, and mazes in this temple all representing the twists and turns that we experience in life.
As educators and even as an individual who teaches others how to study, we encounter the concept of change in our disciplines. Our campuses change leadership, change curriculum, and our change to reflect the current requirements of the time. It isn’t so much a bad thing, but we just have to acknowledge that over a period of time, things don’t ever stay the same. Our students change as well as they grow older and develop into better learners and gain more knowledge. The amount of change that they go through is massive, because there’s so much change happening in their minds, bodies, and environments. One could say that everything is change and there have been philosophers that have postulated this.
So readers, how do we deal with change if we are learning. And what can we do to combat change? I’m a Computer Science based educator and we have to accept the fact that the field is constantly changing and can never be humanely conquerable. There’s always some new tool, framework, or piece of knowledge out there that we may not know. And so my cure to all of this focusing on the things that matters. In all subjects there are some pieces of knowledge that broad enough to form some sort of resistance to change. These are called Universal Ideas or Universal Concepts. The broader one thinks in their thinking, then the more likely they are to acquire knowledge that can be used in any time period. Some other people like to use words like “abstract” or “abstract thinking” and this works too for describing these types of ideas. You can think of them as blueprints or even skeletons and these wireframes sort of can be filled with anything on the inside of them.
Furthermore, I want to talk a little bit more about the temple. As I believe everything in it is symbolic to some degree, and there are many layers to this game. Link encounters four main ghosts in the Temple. They are:
Joelle
Beth
Amy
Meg
And the ghosts in this game are called Poes. These were considered Poe sisters. Each of these sisters represented something about change that we have to overcome in our lifetimes or experience. These sisters can be interpreted in many different ways. However one characterization could be:
Joelle, she is colored tints of red and orange. And so can represent the loss of the past. Nostalgia.
Beth is blue. And represents uncertainty about the future. Uncertainty.
Amy is green. And she represents adaptation or change. Adaptation.
Meg is purple and she can mean identity or acceptance. Discover of Self.
So as one can see each one of these battles with these different ghosts or spirits represent different challenges that we have with dealing with change. Joelle can be seen as representing Nostalgia or wanting for our past experiences. Beth can be considered having anxiety, depression, or uncertainty about the future. Usually this happens when old ways are gone and one is having trouble getting to grips with how to proceed. Amy is all about adaptation and could represent problem solving and puzzles. One could interpret that it is our minds and our logical problem solving skills that will help us get through to the next part of our lives. Lastly, Meg represents the illusions of ourselves and finding out who we really are. Usually this type of change happens after transformation takes place and requires us to figure out who we are.
A connection can be made between these ghosts and the different phases of learning. Learners and people who study have to go through different stages or changes as we acquire knowledge. Think about it.
We have to make sure that our knowledge connects from things we learned before.
We have to make sure we establish a firm foundation going forward in a unsettling subject.
We need to adapt our approach in how we learn a topic in different ways.
We need to figure out what learning methods work best for ourselves and techniques that we like the most.
As we venture through life. We are going to encounter things that must be learned and we will encounter changes in our knowledge and the subjects that we have to internalize. I think understanding change and the positive/negative aspects of it make us stronger individuals. Life is all about transitioning. And so I think that is where this theme excels in teaching us and informing us on how to handle change. People are going to experience it and combat it in many different and personal ways. No matter what though, we all have to face it and experience it.
-Calvin
