I did not know how to feel. Usually there was a sense of accomplishment when I succeeded in Majora’s Mask. A reward or a congratulations. And I usually take that and be on my way. Yet this was different. I never had the experience of what I accomplished would be simply forgotten by the characters once I played the ocarina. It somehow helped me think outside of the video game. How these moments became applicable to how we are doing in our lives.
If you haven’t played the game (like me, until this year), Majora’s Mask is a game where Link must save the town of Termina from a moon crashing on the town in 72 hours. However, when Link plays a certain song, the Song of Time, on his Ocarina, he goes right back to the beginning. As you play that song, you lose everything in your inventory and all the actions you have done become erased. So that big giant rock you blew up in day three? That rock comes right back in day one when the ocarina gets played.
Yet the worst part of it all is the relationships that were lost in going back in time. The characters I talked with, interacted with, the things I did for them, all forgotten. There and gone like the morning dew. It was horrifying. No one remembered me, as if everyone had developed Alzheimer’s with everything I had done. I felt like everything I had done was almost meaningless. It was so uncomfortable.
It was almost instantaneously that I had to remind myself of the larger goal. That despite them not remembering me after I played that song, despite them not knowing what I have and will do for them, my mission to save them went beyond anything that I could do.
And as I saw those end credits roll, it did feel like I accomplished my larger goal. Saving the people from an impending doom and where everyone may not know what I did, I did what was right. Sometimes the things we do go unseen and unheard of.
It’s so applicable in real life, isn’t it? As art can sometimes imitates life, we walk through our daily lives just like the people in Termina, do things for people, maybe out of kindness or simply because it is just the right thing to do, and how quickly it can be forgotten. It can really have an empty feeling, wondering if anything it worth it at the end. We must remind ourselves nothing we do is meaningless.
Your actions are not meaningless.
