Do you ever get presented an invitation to join along someone for a trip, a gathering or any kind of activity? And maybe you just declined it, thinking how much of a hassle it will be to get there, maybe a certain annoying person will be there and you rather not meet or maybe some other reasons. And that’s the end of it, to not think too much about it.

As someone who’s reclusive and generally socially aversive, that’s what I normally do, think about what annoyance that could come up, citing it as the internal reason to justifying rejection it. Request processed, conclusion arrived, moving on. Of course this is not to say I turn down everything, but to say when I do this is how it normally goes down.

I don’t particularly have fear of missing out over an event, for me I am more focused on what could go wrong, or what things I dislike that could happen. So the idea of what I might miss out on never registers in the first place, I am simply fixated on the negatives that I never saw the positives.

It took me playing a light novel game to see it from a different perspective. After finishing the game I decided to explore other endings, It goes like this: The character is given an invitation to a participate in a gathering with a few friends, the player is presented with two choice, to accept or to decline the invitation. If the player chooses to accept the story progresses forward onto the gathering and it’s happening(which the character faces and overcome personal challenges), but if player choose to decline, an alternative ending is reached, where the epilogue concludes with an alternative gathering where the character felt more comfortable in participating.

In the story, the character choose to step out of their comfort zone and faced personal challenges to attain personal growth. Making it an actual dialogue option shows that the character has to make a choice to face the unknown, it’s not an automatic response to accept it.

The progression of the story shows that it’s okay to step out of your comfort zone, and who knows what you will find out there, maybe things out there aren’t that scary after all. While in real life not everything is a hero’s journey, it’s still a chance to have an adventure and explore new experiences. On the other hand the alternative ending also underscores that there is nothing wrong with simply taking a step back when times call for it.

While reading the epilogue of the alternative ending and reflecting on what the character achieved in the main ending, it finally all clicked for me that making certain choices, I am choosing either intentionally or unintentionally to pass out on new things that I could experience and learn about. It’s not like I don’t have an uncomfortable feeling back in my mind when I choose to decline something, but it was never explicitly spelled it out to me, until that time.

So for me that’s the biggest takeaway of all things, the idea that declining things might mean I am turning down new experience in favor of staying in my comfort zone. Ultimately in the future I might still turn some things down, but it would be done so more deliberately with consideration to what I am passing up on. It’s probably obvious to most people in hindsight, but it seems like I am oblivious to it, but now I know, and if you don’t, now you do too.

Author note section:

Hiyaaa o/ And that concludes my second post, writing on something that took me playing a game to understand, despite that I still felt like hiding in my hole guess things don’t change even if I try to be more deliberate >.< Also I wonder if anyone manages to deduce which game I am talking about :P

Well I suppose the fact I managed to write and complete a second blog post is impressive :D This is kinda fun! No idea what’s upcoming though…

To be honest, this is something that happen quite awhile ago so it was sorta a struggle to get it convey what i wanted x.x it doesn’t help that I don’t have much experience writing long form content either, but i am content with the end result, and i am glad i did it! :D

Note on this section: I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I just wanted to include something funny and lighthearted for sake of it :) after writing in a more serious tone, so here we are, will have to see if this stays next time…