This year marked the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda, my absolute favorite game series as a child.  It feels weird to me that Zelda is now a veteran in the relatively young medium of video games, and children are still discovering it for the first time 25 years later.  Here is my story of my time with Zelda, and what it taught me.

It was 1988 in a Wal-Mart in the middle of midwestern nowhere that I first saw it, and was hooked at the title screen (in my defense, it had a sword on it and I was six years old).  Standing at the demo kiosk, I heard to the now classic theme music (click here to listen while you read) and could only wonder what adventure awaited when I pushed start.  Little did I know how the series and I would grow together and the many lessons it would teach me along the way.  I know we all remember this one, as it was in the first cave on the first screen.

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Have you ever been so stuck on solving a problem that no matter how much brain power you could muster the solution continued to elude you, frustrate you, and even drive you crazy?  Or you are searching for a new idea, and the more time spent on it the further it drifts away?  It seems like the quintessential rock and a hard place.  Let’s see how tv’s brilliant yet awkward physicist Dr. Sheldon Cooper (he’s not crazy, his mother had him tested) overcame this exact scenario with a little help from Albert Einstein, and then I’ll share what works for me.

The scene: Sheldon Cooper has been up all night trying to solve a problem.  When we first see his struggle, he is attempting to engage the superior colliculus of his brain (I’ve done similar so-called brain strategies in times of desperation – they don’t work).  Three days and no sleep later he is still stuck when he has a breakthrough that will ultimately lead him to his solution.

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