In the school year of 2025-26 at Pahrump Valley High School, the senior class faces their final year, both at PVHS, and required schooling. With this, great changes will face the class of ‘26’s lives as they move on to being adults, and move on to being functional cogs in the American machine, or move on to greater things. Beginning again, however, is something most people face, but what must the great minds of 2026 let go of to begin again?
For some people, they’ll be leaving behind the comforts of home life. “When I graduate and go to college, I’ll be leaving behind my cat and my family,” said Deanna Taylor-Jannotte, a PVHS senior. Colleges, let alone those of interest, are usually never near home and require some amount of far distance travel, and either staying in the college dorms or an apartment nearby. For many, it will be difficult to move away from those they’ve grown up around or leave a beloved pet behind.
For others, it’ll be letting go of what fair amounts of free time they have been given. “I’d have to let go of some of the things I do in my past time and hobbies, because I would need to focus on getting a job, and/or going to college,” Senior, Lukas Buchanan had to say. The trade for success and money is, of course, time and effort. And with shortened time to oneself in adult life, valued past times must be reconsidered and scaled down to fewer amounts.
It’s a dreadful thing to leave behind the comforts some have known all their lives, and move on into the world of adulthood, and being a functioning member of society. Not all do, and often are left behind.
A video game 15 years ago forced its players to also let go, but rather than things like letting go of home and hobbies to move on with their lives, they had to let go of a fortune to survive. In Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money, released Dec. 21, 2010, the player’s character, The Courier, is lured to the Sierra Madre, based on the movie and novel , a luxury casino built before the nuclear apocalypse, holding the promise of beginning again.
However, the perceived fortune is but a death trap, where danger lurks around every corner in the form of the casino’s former staff, immortalized in radiation suits, and a poisonous red mist that encompasses the area. Even if one makes it past them, a danger yet awaits in one’s companions, who also have ambitions perhaps separate from the players. But, until they complete a heist on the casino’s vault, they’ve all been forced into it; they cannot leave, and without cooperation, they will all die.
At the end of the story of Dead Money, the player is forced to let go of the fortune of the Madre to survive- to begin again, and with the right choices made, the player’s companions will as well. And as stated in the ending dialogue of Dead Money, under certain circumstances, in reference to the Madre, “A promise that you can change your fortunes. Begin again… Finding it, though, that’s not the hard part. It’s letting go.”
It takes thinking of what a choice, or a skill check, might yield in consequences. Sometimes it’s better not to use speech, while at others it is. And when finally met with the shining treasure of the Madre, greed may very well be the player’s undoing. Be locked away forever in the vault of the Madre. But most won’t, most will leave behind the fortune, and find fortune in the simple fact of survival.
Letting go is something everyone will face in their life, whether the importance be great or insignificant. But sometimes it is a good thing, a beneficial thing to leave behind the past, to look forward to the future. New Vegas is a video game, one that can be exploited in order to claim the treasure of the Madre directly against Dead Money’s message.
But in the real world, one does not have that same choice. Play the game, let the promise of the Madre’s fortune be a convincing lure, and in the real world, enjoy life before it must change. And when the time comes to begin again, face that uncertainty with confidence, maybe even a smile, and let go. That’s how fortunes are truly changed.
