The learning curve starts immediately after birth. You learn to walk, you learn to talk, you learn social behaviour, you improve your skills. You explore the world around you. You use the knowledge that you've gained. You get acquaintances, make friends and find lovers. You work and you have fun. You live!
But inevitable the moment comes that you start wondering what it's all about. What is the purpose of being here? Why are you doing what you are doing? What does this world mean to you?
For the Second Life world it seems obvious. We all have chosen to be here, so you can expect it having a purpose, varying from entertainmant to work. For most of us the purposes change gradually though, like Botgirl Questi put forward a couple of weeks ago. Even if it has become "just" a daily routine - Dandellion's comment on mentioned post - it has some value. And if it hasn't anymore, it's (technically spoken) easy to quit, although this is not always painless.
It's more complicated when we are talking about first life. Lack of purpose won't be a reason to leave for most of us. Some people will put up with their fate and just go on with their daily routine, without asking why and sighing: "that's life". Others will take a halt and wonder. Wonder what is happening, questioning who they are and what they will be, asking themselves what is important in live.
It's obvious that I belong to the second category, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post ;-)
There are many names for this phenomena - the moment that you find your self redefining your goals. It's called midlife crise, or burnout, or whatever, but most of the titles have a negative taste. To my opinion it's a positive proces though . Holding your pace to reflect, and possibly choose another way, is a necessity. You have to keep your dreams in mind, and set your goals. And sometimes this takes some time. But anyway you need to determine your strategy to succesfully finish this game and to have fun while playing it.
Back to Second Life now, as that is what this blog is supposed to be about ;-).
I was driven by curiousity when I entered our virtual world, about 16 months ago. And with that I found the possibility to do things that were difficult to arrange in my busy first life, with a nearly fulltime job and two little kids: suddenly I could go out, travel to beautiful places and meet new friends.
But it was more than that, although I didn't see that at first. It was also a refuge from a life that wasn't mine anymore, a life that had lost my interest. I became addicted to Zippora's life, existing of fun and laughter and where I got a lot of attention. The more Zippora was alive, the less human liked her life.
Nevertheless, I've always realised very well that my presence in SL wasn't helping me improve my first life. Particularly not when some SL-drama happened and that made the human feel bad during her common day business.
I've considered quitting SL many times, but I didn't. And looking back I'm glad I didn't, because my second life has also helped me finding back myself in first life. I'll explain that.
First, reflecting on what I liked to do in my second life - including blogging and flickr - showed me what I was missing in the atomic world. Apparently I wanted to be more than the mum and the teacher that I was in first life.
Second, my self-confidence has grown a lot here. It seems that a good-looking avatar is good for your self-esteem, but that is not what I mean. I'm talking about the friends coming back to me in-world, simply because they like me for who I am. But I'm also thinking of you - readers - returning to my blog time after time and sometimes even taking the effort to comment. All together this has given me the feeling that I'm a valuable person. I needed that.
Third, and not the least, talking with friends about my first life has helped me to sort my thoughts and to make new plans. Conversations in-world and in gtalk have given me the courage to make decisions and even little comments have supported me a lot: some friends possibly weren't even aware of their help.
Writing this, I suddenly realise that my SL-friends possibly played a bigger part in the proces than my FL- friends. In first life everyone seems to be so busy, and every conversation tends to be about kids and carreers. In Second Life it's somehow easier to have a person-to-person conversation that is going deeper.
Anyway, I'm back in the game. I've set some goals for the near future, enjoy the challenges and know what is important for me in life at the moment. And one of those valuable things is still Second Life. Because it's not just a game: it's life.
6 comments:
This is a beautifully thoughtful post Zippora. Sometimes I think Second Life is a mirror of our first life but we can talk to this one... 'Second Life, Second Life on the wall... which is the fairest life of all?' Both have obvious advantages, first life clearly takes precedence (of course that does not really need to be said). But Second Life can give rich insights into ourselves if we are brave enough to look! Thanks for the musings!
I love this post Zip and thank you for writing it!
Misty
sad that you, at some point in your life, got the impression /feeling that you weren't a valuable person. But very recognizable feelings for everybody. i strongly believe that answers and solutions come from within because at some major crossroads in life there's only you. It's always great though to warm your mind near the gentle stove of a friends soulkitchen. ;-)
A beautiful post, and a very astute one. Every escape to a better world, either individual or a social, begs the question what we escape from, and there is nothing more liberating than to discover that there are other escapes, too.
And then, again, there are things we only need to escape from for a little time, once in a while. Not every book needs to change our life, does our second one need to. There is a balance to bes ought, and it seems you have found yours — I am glad you did.
Thank you all :)
Cyberloom, I particularly like your image of a mirror. I have to keep that in mind for another post about identity, that I started writing before I'd even finished this one :)
Hi Zipporah. Mmm - I'm not sure how much it's life, really. It feels like life, for sure, and I think therein lies the crux. For me it's important to look at SL as an exercise in perceptual psychology. What we "see", in a very large measure, "is". That doesn't mean it really "is"... and I think this matters. It would take a long time to work this out into a workable psychology of virtual life, and most people aren't in SL to do that anyway. But the enormous numbers of people getting hurt emotionally in SL seems to indicate that we need to develop a better grasp on how and why we develop relationships, trust, love, hatreds, enmities... all without objective and verifiable referents. Y'know? I mean, really :) We need to figure this shit out :)
Eveline Nixdorf
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