As a twelve-year-old working at a cantina and blowing every spare quarter at Electric Kingdom, I thought Galaga was just a game. Decades later, I realized it was a teacher. In this week’s Authbition episode, I read an autofiction story about BMX parts, basement turntables, a ragtag childhood crew, and the strange little cheat code that revealed how success really works.

Some cheat codes remove all challenge—and ruin the game. No cheat code makes life impossible. But the right glitch? It shows the sweet balance between struggle and ease, ambition and enjoyment, effort and flow.

This is the lesson hidden in the fluorescent hum of an arcade at the bottom of the hill: success isn’t about hacking the system. It’s about finding the path that’s hard enough to matter and easy enough to love.

Health, happiness, kindness, respect
for every being and all things.