The year is ending, and with it comes that sudden desire to think about your life. You grab a cup of tea and sit looking at the street in front of your home while hearing the neighborhood do its daily chores. Children laugh, laundry flaps on a line, a car passes, birds chirp. The wind blows gently on your face as you breathe in the tea’s aroma. This season inevitably brings a state of pure reflection—what have you achieved? And if the answer feels thin, you might feel a little bothered.
A Time for Reflection
Yet organizing these thoughts and recognizing small victories is difficult in a world obsessed with relentless productivity where your social media friend might have married, bought a house and had a kid all in the same year. At the same time, you may feel you’ve barely advanced—or even slipped backwards. It’s in such moments that we need a shift in perspective. While I usually game for fun, sometimes a title comes along that challenges my worldview, revealing that life is rarely black and white.
For me, this year, that game was Wanderstop. It not only reflected my life like a mirror; it arrived precisely when I needed something—or someone—to tell me it’s okay to stop. To care for your mind, your body, yourself. Its central theme is an allegory for burnout, a message I believe will resonate deeply with many.
Chasing Dreams at all Costs
In Wanderstop, you play as Ada, a warrior who dedicated her life to a single dream: becoming unbeatable. She trained relentlessly, striving for that coveted status of invincibility. Then she lost a battle. And another. And another, until her dream lay shattered. Desperate, she embarked on a quest to regain her strength.
But she couldn’t. She had reached that point where mind and body, pushed to operate at 100% every second, simply break. This is burnout—a paralyzing exhaustion that strips you of the will to pursue anything. I found myself in a similar place: tired from chasing an unreachable standard, pushing daily to excel, ignoring all consequences.
Then, suddenly, it vanished. I was dismissed from a job I cherished, one I had worked tirelessly not just to keep, but to master. For days, I was like Ada: desperate to fight back and reclaim what I’d lost, yet utterly unable to move forward.
Ada finds herself at Wanderstop, a strange tea shop run by a being named Boro. Here, she can prepare tea, serve customers, or, most importantly, do nothing at all. She resents being trapped in this clearing, but over steaming mugs, she is forced to sit with her defeat. Here, she learns a vital lesson: boredom is not a sin, but a natural state. There is no shame in idleness; it is essential maintenance for the mind and soul.
Are you Blindly Following a Path?
A pivotal moment arrives when Ada wonders if being an undefeated warrior is all there is. Even though she dreamed about being a fighter ever since she was a kid, she starts to see that life has not one, but several paths to be followed. Our journey does not have to be a direct, single-track route to a set objective.
This made me wonder: was I, too, blindly following a track I had imposed upon myself? In our high-productivity world, we often press forward toward goals that may no longer serve us, either because we lack the time to question them or because we fear the judgment of “giving up.” It’s as if an invisible audience is always watching, ready to label us weak for changing direction.
By year’s end, my dream had been ripped away, and my body was too tired to try anymore. But I began to ask: was I ever following my dream, or someone else’s? Was I an Ada, striving for an impossible victory just to prove I could, rather than because I truly wanted it? Sometimes a fall isn’t just an obstacle—it’s a crucial invitation to ask what you’re really doing, and where you’re truly going.
I couldn’t cling to that old dream any longer. And now I see that brighter paths exist, full of options I’d never considered. What I thought was my one big chance was, in reality, an exhausting illusion that trapped me in a cycle of peak productivity and crushing burnout. I escaped. But how many others are still trapped in that same loop?
The End of a Journey is Always the Beginning of Another One
And so we come to Christmas—a time when everything seems to slow, to end, promising a fresh and hopeful start. It mirrors the moment Ada finally accepts her situation and embraces a fundamental truth: never forget or abandon yourself. You are the most important part of your life, and greater things are always waiting to unfold.
Your journey is a matter of perspective, and that perspective can deceive even you. You may think that you didn’t have the greatest of years, but maybe that opportunity lost was just a trap, that dream that ended was an illusion and that high-achieving person that your family talks about is living a miserable life without them even acknowledging. You cannot control what it has passed, but you can control which path you are taking now.
As Ada finally leaves the clearing, we’re left to wonder: will she pursue her old dream? Or will she open a tea shop? We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. The lesson she learned—the lesson Wanderstop imparts—is that boredom is okay. Taking time to care for yourself is okay. Slowing down is not just permissible, but necessary. The world won’t care for you when you fall. You must do that yourself. So why not start now, while you’re still strong?
Do you like our content?
Support LadiesGamers as a member on Patreon!
Or buy us a cup of coffee or tea on Ko-Fi!
