Purpose of Life in a Metaverse

Life is an open metaverse game. You do not enter with a guidebook or a clear goal.. you simply arrive, choose an avatar, and begin moving through a world that was already running before you joined. At first, you stumble without knowing where to go or what to do, and then slowly you begin to pick up the patterns of play.. gathering, losing, struggling, growing, and meeting countless other players who are also busy finding their own way. Some days it feels exciting, other days it feels sluggish. Many times you forget you ever asked what the point of all this was.

What stands out to me is that this world never really gives you a reason for being here. There is no clear nor official announcement. What it gives instead are the conditions: space to move, time that passes, and cause and effect to bind them together. If you touch fire you burn, if you put in the effort you grow stronger, if you lose something close you feel pain. All of this is clear inside the play and you do not question it much while you are in the middle of it.

But the moment you pause and ask why the whole thing exists, the questions start to feel out of reach. To ask what was before time is already to use the word before, which itself belongs to time. To ask what is outside space is to use the word outside, which only makes sense within space. And to ask for the cause of everything is to ask for the cause of causation itself, which is a loop that the game engine cannot resolve. The question has no answer. Well, technically, the question itself is categorically wrong.

Still, we do not stop asking. Some players spend their entire life chasing this question. Others get too occupied into the tasks and quests that they forget it completely. And a few, through struggle or reflection or sheer chance, begin to sense that they were never only the avatar that runs through the world. They were always also the one sitting outside, the one who is outside the metaverse.

When you see that, the whole question becomes very light. You can still play with excitement.. you can build, you can collect, you can help others, but you do it with a lighter load because you no longer need the final answer.

I feel this even when I am working on my own projects, either designing games or building products.. getting caught up in small wins and losses that seem so important in the moment. Then something reminds me that it is all still a game. That feels like freedom, and it makes me want to keep playing, while knowing I can always step back and see it as it is.