Calm Down

“Follow me.”
“I’m stuck.”
“Heal yourself.”
“I’m dead.”
“Let’s retreat.”
“Let’s regen.”
“Back up.”
“This way.”
“I’m stuck.”
“Come back.”
“Still stuck.”
“Lemme level.”
“Wait up.”
“Hurry up.”
“Slow down.”
“Damn it.”
“Shut up.”

This is how we play games together, cooperative style.

***

I didn’t actually have a weekend. The person I was pretending to be (i.e. not me) had a fairly relaxing weekend. Let’s discount sleep time, since that’s special K time. During the weekend, in one way or another, I pretended to be: a massive mutant made out of metal, anoter mutant able to move objects with her mind, an elf whose horse companion is constantly threatened with death from on high, a player in the National Football League, probably a third-down/change of pace running back, maybe a punt returner. As it stood, for about three to six hours, I was actually just me, getting reading done.

People have always pretended to be something that they are not. Go watch a play. They’re like movies, only live, with better dialogue and fewer special effects. Lot more expensive, but that’s because no one ever watches them. Go watch one. Trust me, you’ll like it, or I’ll refund the money you paid for my advice (offer not valid within my lifetime). We lie to others and to ourselves, crafting simple or elaborate personae in order to make it through another day. Sometimes, I feel like I’m just a multifaceted crystal, slowly twirling in the light, reflecting different frequencies and images with each passing second.

Have our increased capability for imagination and leisure in the manner contributed to a weakening of the self and self-identity? Psychiatrists make great livings diagnosing and treating the problems of the psyche today. They might not have done so five hundred years ago, or would have just consigned someone to the asylum with a bit in their mouth. If I’d gone around telling people that I had pointed ears and my horse was in constant danger, then perhaps they would have put a bit in my mouth, told me that as long as I wanted to be a horse, I could be a horse in the dungeon.

We have more time, and yet there’s so much more to do. Any free time has to be that much more relaxing by comparison for the most part. Hence, high energy partying, high energy video games, high energy music, high energy alternatives. Becoming something we aren’t to relax. Am I trying to indict our high tempo society? Yes. Its fun to do something different once in a while, but to continually need it to calm down? Its like putting gasoline in a car to get it to work once you’ve driven it 400 miles, when all you had to do was keep adding fuel in every 200 miles.