I have been playing Hollow Knight: Silksong for a few weeks now, and somewhere between the chime of a bell-laden checkpoint and a narrow platforming gauntlet, I had an embarrassing realization: I am the most impatient player I know, and I have spent years sabotaging my own joy. This has very little to do with Silksong itself, which is wonderful and atmospheric, and whose soundtrack I will absolutely listen to more than any reasonable person should. Instead, it is about the fact that I rush everything. I get furious at pre-movie ads because I want the thing I paid for immediately. I leave parties early because I feel like I have checked a social box. I click the fastest online purchase instead of searching for a deal. In games, I have spent years assuming I was simply not talented at certain titles, when in truth I needed a crumb of patience.

The Speedrunning Urge Without the Skill

I have always mashed. The button is my enemy and my comfort. In turn-based RPGs, the genre built around careful planning, I hammer confirm as if every second saved is a small victory. In Metal Gear Solid, I skip codec calls even when talented actors are delivering excellent performances. In Soulslikes and action games, I charge in, die, lose an hour, and then do the same thing again. The internal monologue goes something like: I know I should dodge, wait for the giant enemy to swing, then land a safe hit. But what if I run straight at it and try to finish quickly? Nope. Dead. Again. This is not speedrunning. Speedrunners are precise and skilled. This is just me trying to finish every encounter as fast as possible while forgetting to experience any of it.

Skarrgard Held Up a Mirror

Silksong is hard, and I know many players have argued about its difficulty. But early on, I finally allowed myself to admit what the real problem was. I died twice to Skarrgard, that irritating mini-boss everyone seemed to hate. The first two attempts were pure hurry: I tried to squeeze as much damage as possible into every opening, only to get clipped by predictable attacks. Then I stopped. I took a breath and fought him slowly, one clean hit at a time, then running away and waiting. Hit once, run, wait. That rhythm became almost meditative. I beat him immediately, and I genuinely did not understand why he was supposed to be hard. A little door in my brain opened and whispered, "Stop rushing and think for a second."

Patience Is the Actual Skill Tree

Maybe this is obvious to normal people. Of course patience is the key. But game culture around hard titles often frames everything as whether you are good, whether you have the right reflexes, whether your timing is elite. We post completion times and speedkill clips, and then I feel like a failure for not finishing quickly. Once I believe I am bad, quitting becomes easier. I look up strategies and then ignore them because I want to be done. But Silksong has started to steady me. I do not know if it is the calm music, the gorgeous world of Pharloom, the gentle hum of its strange creatures, or just the fact that I am getting older. But I have begun to slow down. I observe more. I care less about completing it when my friends do, because I know that race would only make me sloppy.

The most important shift is recognizing that getting good is not about reaction time or mechanical complexity. It is about accepting the most obvious approach: deliberate, measured play. In Silksong, the combat, platforming, and exploration all reward a careful tempo. You read the room, understand the rhythm, and respond. You do not force the game to move at your pace; you let it teach you its own. That is not weakness. That is not falling behind. That is the actual mechanic many of us refuse to level up.

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Look, Silksong is too good to rush, and too good not to play slowly. Dying repeatedly because I refused to think was never a skill issue; it was a patience issue. I am not cured. There is still an itch at the back of my skull to blow through sections so I can reach the next one. But now I can notice that itch, take a breath, and continue fighting Skarrgard's cousins with a steady rhythm. Hit once, run, wait. Hit once, run, wait. Getting good is not a talent. It is a decision to slow down.