I was playing an online game, fighting a powerful boss alongside a stranger I’d never met. For people unfamiliar with video games, a “boss” is a difficult enemy you face more than once to defeat. When you finally succeed, there’s a chance—often very small—of receiving a rare “drop,” an in-game reward that might never appear again.
The first round went well enough. I made mistakes, but we survived. The second round didn’t. I was hit by a fireball from the sky, and we lost.
Afterward, my teammate typed a brief but sharp message: “You’re bad.”
That commentlanded harder than I expected. I was learning, trying, and still improving—but I was judged for being imperfect. In that moment, I felt discouraged and hurt. A familiar urge appeared: to withdraw, to stop trying, to protect myself from feeling that discomfort again.
I thought about quitting. Not because I didn’t enjoy the game, but because staying meant being open to more judgment.
This is a familiar fork in the road. Discomfort shows up—self-doubt, fear—and we have a choice. We can move away from the feeling by avoiding the situation, or we can make space for the discomfort and continue acting in line with our values.
I chose to stay. Not to prove the other player wrong, and not because I suddenly felt confident—but because I didn’t want one person’s unkindness to decide my behaviour.
Eventually, I defeated the boss. And this time I received one of the rarest drops in the game, all while playing with someone patient and encouraging.
The drop felt satisfying, but that wasn’t the real reward.
For people who don’t play games, it might be easy to dismiss this as trivial. But the “drop” is a useful metaphor. In life, we often chase outcomes—success, approval, confidence, relief—hoping they’ll arrive if we just endure enough discomfort. Sometimes they do. Often, they don’t.
Resilience isn’t about getting the drop. It’s about staying present and choosing actions that align with our values, even when the outcome is uncertain. Confidence isn’t something we wait to feel before acting; it’s something that grows because we stay.
What I learned in that moment is that unkind people don’t define us—they test us. They reveal the values we want to live by when things get uncomfortable.
We all face these moments: a cutting comment, a small humiliation, a situation that makes us want to retreat. The question isn’t whether it hurts—it does. The question is whether we let discomfort make our choices for us, or whether we choose who we want to be, drop or no drop.