Life as an Internship: A Trial We Chose

Translated by AI

“Life is like an internship.”

You arrive here — no one hands you a contract, no one explains the rules, no one tells you when the job starts or when it ends. You stand among the crowd, surrounded by noise, the air carrying unfamiliar scents. You follow the flow of people, stepping inside. No one is waiting for you, and no one hurries you, but time — like a river — moves forward in silence, never allowing anyone to linger too long. You glance ahead, and so, you step forward.

This is an internship you chose to enter.

You weren’t pushed in; you didn’t stumble in by accident. You made the choice — you just don’t remember why you made that decision at the time. You stand here, like a newly arrived intern. There’s no handbook on your desk, no one’s turned on your computer, no supervisor in sight, no one to greet you, not even anyone to check whether you’ve arrived.

What kind of internship is this? What are the rules here? Where are the evaluation criteria? If this is a game, then what is its goal?

You don’t know. No one has told you.

But you’re already here.

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Is life’s structure really that chaotic and unformed?

People constantly ask, “Does life have a purpose?” “What’s the meaning of being alive?” These questions have echoed through thousands of years, with countless proposed answers.

Some say life is a path already laid out, like a carefully designed maze — just follow the set track, and you’ll reach the end. They believe that life has a standard answer, that all choices, efforts, and challenges exist to push you toward that endpoint.

But others argue that life has no standard answer, no endpoint, no guide. Instead of exhausting your whole life searching for some “supposed answer,” why not focus on the journey itself — how can you live in a way that feels worthwhile?

These two ways of thinking — one seeking results, the other creating meaning — seem opposed, yet perhaps they share the same blind spot.

We are not here to discuss “how to make life happy,” nor are we overly concerned with “how to make life worthwhile.” Those questions have been asked too many times, with too many answers.

Our question is this:

What if life’s structure isn’t random or messy, but part of a design we simply haven’t yet recognised?

What if none of this is accidental, but there’s a set of rules we have yet to uncover? What if family, gender, race, ideology, even international conflict — are not just historical accidents, but actual levels in this game? What if behind these levels, there really is some hidden evaluation system — and we’ve just assumed they’re unavoidable parts of life?

What if this has never been a passive experience, but rather a purposeful trial?

If life is a game — then what are its mechanisms?

Following this line of thought, we try to trace the patterns running through life. And we discover an intriguing possibility: if life’s essence is about learning, practicing, testing, and growing, then it’s strikingly similar to something we’re already familiar with.

Like a workplace internship.

But this is not an internship someone arranged for you. At some moment, you made the choice to step in, even if you can’t quite recall why or what you were thinking at the time.

At this moment, here you stand — no matter what, the internship has already begun.

When you first step in, you know nothing. No one tells you the exact rules, no one explains where the finish line is. You can only observe, imitate, adjust through mistakes, adapt to challenges. You work hard to keep up, thinking that if you just learn fast enough, perform well enough, you’ll eventually find a clear path and understand the true meaning of this internship.

But soon you realise: there’s no standard answer, no fixed promotion system, not even a clear graduation date. You learn and grow, but growth itself seems endless. Levels follow one after another, scenes keep shifting, rules change at will — and you can only respond in the moment, learning to stay on your feet.

More difficult still, no one tells you which direction to go, no one explains the hidden rules, and no one even informs you that this internship had already started.

Does this game have rules?

We offer no standard answers, no finish lines drawn in advance. We’re merely trying to shift the angle, to break apart the structure of this game, searching for the rules hidden in everyday details, questioning whether this game really has an unnoticed set of evaluation standards. If it does, then what are they? How do they shape our choices, our values, our very notion of “success”?

If this is a game, then what role are we playing? How can we crack its code?

In the discussion ahead, we will attempt to deconstruct this game, piecing together its mechanisms from the clues we already have. We’ll draw on various theories to help decode the world — for example:

The “Brain in a Vat” thought experiment, which challenges our understanding of reality: are we really playing this game, or are we just part of some larger system, a simulation?

The Peter Principle, which reveals patterns in hierarchical promotion: if the workplace is a game, could its upgrade rules apply to all of life?

This is not mysticism, nor a comforting exercise in personal growth — it’s a rigorous inquiry, a deep dive into the architecture of life.

We are not here to ask “how can I be happier?” but rather: if we truly chose to come here, what for?

You think this is just an internship. But as you keep walking, you start to suspect that this is not merely an internship — it’s a test, a puzzle, a game we chose to join, even though we have yet to read its rules.

And when we finally understand the true nature of this internship — perhaps, life’s hardest questions will no longer be so hard.

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If, after reading “Life, Like an Internship”, you still feel a bit restless, as if some things were left unsaid, then the upcoming Game Hypothesis series is made just for you. We are not merely interns, nor just actors on a stage — we must ask: where does this boundless stage come from? Who set it up? And who tells us how to perform? If you, too, want to reclaim the script that truly belongs to you, then let’s step together into the depths of this grand game. 
➔ https://lifetrainee.org/category/game-hypothesis