Sunday, June 1, 2008

Staying real in an unreal world

Second Life is, in many ways, the ultimate test of staying true to ourselves.

We can appear as anything we want in SL. We can be men or women, dragons or drow, angels or demons.

And when we can be whatever we want, whenever we want, concepts of physical beauty go out the window. True, almost everyone is physically beautiful in SL. But when everyone is the same it starts everyone on the same playing ground. Appearance begins to matter less and less the longer one stays in world. It is not the appearance on the outside that matters, but the character of the person on the inside that makes all the difference.

That is, of course, an overstatement. There are many people in-world who are superficial and will stay superficial for as long as they shall live. But those people are always out there, and we must learn to deal with them as best we can.

The real challenge is staying true to "the character inside." Second Life can be looked at as a training ground. All around us are temptations and various and creative ways to lose our souls. Experimenting with who we are is not a bad thing, but, ultimately, being who we are not will destroy us.

I'm talking about things like being true to our own personalities. Not condoning behaviors which we feel to be wrong. Not being deceptive when we don't feel ourselves to be deceitful people. Not hurting people just because we're anonymous and we can. Not giving in to peer pressure and give up being friends with people whom we would ordinarily stay friends with.

To thine own self be true. Learning who "thine own self" is is something that Second Life can help with. Sticking to that "own self" is a challenge that we must struggle with every day.

Love and Peace
Alphonsus

3 comments:

Camilla said...

I started to write a comment here, but it became so lengthy that I moved it to my blog as a post of its own. See it here: http://tinyurl.com/6369zq

Alpha said...

Ooops, better be careful Alphonsus, you're starting to make sense again ;-).

malakyte said...

So true!