Like so many of us, all I've ever wanted since I started playing Destiny, was the exotic weapon known as the Vex Mythoclast, or Vex for short. It's status is mythological in proportion.... especially of you don't have one. And if that be the case, than one laments yet another VOG hard run that ends with getting yet another XVO Timebreaker, makes 8, my twelfth Praedyth's Revenge, and a Shader. Clearly the gods hate me. And to add insult to injury, all this is taking place at the same time your teammates are confessing, one with joy, the other with exasperation, that they just received the Vex. The joy I understand. It's his first Vex. It's the guardian who got his 6th Vex that irks me.
In these moments I'm torn in two, one half of me excited for my teammates good fortune, while the other half, wishing the whole world to burn. And I'll bet you donuts to dollars, neither is pissed off about not getting a rocket bike.
Sometimes we just need something to go our way. Just one thing, then the whole world changes and opens up in a different light. We need to win once and a while. And it feels really good to get something that we really want. It happens so often if fact, not getting what we want, that our hopes and desires can become tested, or even falter completely at times, surrendering all hope...
But we don't quit. We gripe, moan, raise hell, and demonstrate our monstrous indignation over being denied the Mythoclast for the hundredth cursed time... and then play again. We wake up again. We try again. We fight again. We learn again. We blast away at life again... much like Sisyphus rolls his stone; with an ineluctable drive and purpose... Unstoppable. The will to live. The will to keep going. Especially if we don't even know why at times.... Or more still, those moments that we 'hate the -blam!-ing game'. You know?
But we don't quit. Because we want something.
And I want my Vex Mythoclast.
So... I play again.
Is there a twist to this story, or a happy ending? Most definitely. You don't think that I brought you all this way to tell you that I didn’t get the Vex? Hell yeah I got that Vex! My whole life is roses!! And I'm loving it like a hammer loves a nail. A perfect union. Soul mates even. So trust me, I'm living it up.
Maybe more important though...
The twist here is, how I got the Vex. And what it means to me to have something that I put the time in for. You know, the grind. The kind where you dig in. Especially when it feels pointless. It's the toil. Its the work. Its the saturation in effort... It's changes us. It teaches us something, many things in fact, about the nature of desire, loss, pain and love.
The toil, the time spent in the grind, sweetens our successes and fumbling both.
End Note:
Two night ago I was playing VoG on hard mode after the weekly reset. We had a good team.
Good manners and skill… an all around good vibe. I think we knocked out the raid in under 20 minutes or so. Every reward I got was something that I had already gotten again, and again, and again… I was so mad. I once again felt so stilted.
Excepting this one difference… it was OK that I didn’t get it. Because I had a really good time playing.
Often, my primary weapons bay is full. And it keeps me from receiving lifes blessings.
So on occasion, I find gifts waiting for me in the mail… waiting for me to ‘pick’ them up, after I've made space for them. And on this occasion, I arrived at the Tower and saw that I had mail. I thought to myself, as I was saying out loud to my fire team in all jest, “Hey, maybe my Vex is in the mail?”
Sure enough… there it was. The bright yellow glowing engram that said Vex Mythoclast.
And I’ve never been happier…. until the moment that I figured out that all I needed to do was hold down the trigger on the Vex, instead of pulling it once for every single shot.
If the universe could orgasm… it would sound like illumination!
Go get your Vex!
Sincerely,
OccamsPhazer
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A beautiful story :P