What's Real Anyway?
The last few months have been challenging for me, my world turned upside down so to speak. My tendency is to go for a hike in the hills, walk by the beach, or just around the neighborhood when I’m feeling stressed. This week, however, I’ve been confined to home, but not separated from de-stressing in nature.
Enjoying the sunrise in SL
My clogged sinuses woke me early this morning, and concerns rushed into my mind. But hiking the hills or walking the beach was out, so I grabbed my laptop and logged into Second Life (SL). Just so happened the sun was rising there (and if it wasn’t I could have made it so).
I left my house, walked my avatar along the beach, and down to my favorite peer. I could fly, but I really enjoy that stroll.
As I sat, I let the sound of the waves roll over me, and watched the seagulls fly about, an orca breaching in the distance, the ferry coming and going from the dock . . . . Would you consider this experience less real than in person?
Certainly, the physical aspect is absent, and the visual is slightly different. Yet, some would argue that your in-person experiences are generally not real either, and that this virtual version is every bit as unreal/real as the so called real experiences.
All of life is but a dream, and virtual worlds are just a different manifestation of that dream.
What’s real anyway? If you start to look closely into your life, you’ll begin to see that most of what you experience is of the mind, of the imagination. We create scenarios, problems, situations . . . yet, if we stop to look at what’s really happening, at the here and now, all of that is absent. There is simply being.
Experiences come through the senses, in-person, or virtually. This is why I’m hesitant to say real life versus virtual life. Aren’t all our experiences real or not real, depending on how consider them? I find classes every bit as educational and real virtually or in-person. The sounds of the sea and the gulls are as soothing, and the communication with people sometimes as enriching, and sometimes more so, than in-person.
Watching the sunrise in SL is not going to solve my problems, is not going to make all my wishes comes true, but then neither would a walk on the beach in-person.
Tags: Reality