not real sure where this is going to go, but letting it have its head.
(recording available: addiction.mp3 )
i find i have, at long last, broken my addiction to gaming. it feels odd, because i did not think it would ever happen. it feels odder still because the reason that it is broken has nothing to do with finding a dislike of the worlds or their classes, races, and mechanics. rather, i have at long last realized that it is a pointless effort to try and do the things i have wanted to do within them.
here, a much lower voiced muttering, an admission, i have never truly thought of these places and spaces as ‘just games’. and i fought ever thinking of them as such right to the bitter end. and it was a bitter ending, for all it is no longer so.
being marginal in this way is not helpful – to me or anyone – for all there were moments in which great help was both received and given.
i have played these games from the time they were ANSI and accessible only by way of BBSs, MOOs, MUDs, MUSHes, and have remained ‘true to character’ in all of them because, frankly, it was never a character that i created or played in any of them.
this, the not-so-secret secret. i suppose anyone who knows me already knows it. i am one of those odd people who think that any place in which humans gather is a natural venue for working to deliver hope, benefit, and support to others. don’t get me wrong, i am far from a mother theresa or whatever. but the aspiration to such things is and has always ‘been here’ and it is a thing that i have always set as a priority in my interactions with others because, frankly, it matters… to me, and i sincerely believe, to the world at large.
from the time i arrived ‘online’, circa oh… 1980, as a child, i felt very strongly that the vast space in which people connected not face to face, but quite literally, mind to mind, was a sacred thing. i know that will read weird. it’s ok. i’ve been called worse. heh.
so much of the world is lost in the various homages to the superficial, the shallow, and the easily labeled. but in the virtual world, it seemed all those things were magically mitigated. if you could express yourself, you could not only connect in meaningful ways with others, you could actually accomplish things that distance and lack of personal “knowing” would otherwise make impossible.
the idea of touching minds from great distances resonated with me from the first moment i connected… heh… all 300 baud and rickety AT and thinking this was the most amazing thing that would ever be possible in life or the world.
and i suppose it would be a disservice to many moments and people to say that is not, very precisely, what has happened over the last 17 years. through so many venues… not all of them games, though they hold the lion’s share in the long, long list of places in which i have ‘existed’ virtually.
i’m struggling as i write this, because it is hard to talk about this without it sounding arrogant or some other horrible adjective. “i did this…”, “i did that…” bleh. that’s not the point.
you have no idea how many lives touched mine over these years. i cannot possibly tell all the stories. sadly, i cannot remember all the names. and frankly, many of them i never knew beyond a screen-name, even as i knew amazingly intimate details of their lives and secret thoughts that never found daylight in the ‘real world’.
i’ll risk the accusation of arrogance by disclaiming here, quietly, that everything that follows is not some prideful testament of ‘what i did’ but a humble wonder that it was at all possible… and a thankfulness that it was, because these things mattered, they made a difference, and there are people out there who, even as we never knew one another beyond a cerebral connection made in a illusory space, for moments, we each knew one another in very deep, personal, and touching ways.
thanks to the availability of such places, lives were saved. i haven’t actually counted… truthfully, i have lost count over the years… especially once i realized the numbers just didn’t matter. and not only lives. marriages, too. hopes were raised, demons were defeated, fears were banished, and lives were set upon brighter paths.
mine included. especially mine included.
to this day, i cannot bring myself to believe this technology has been or will ever be other than a truly world-benefitting thing… even as humans abuse and misuse it just as they will anything, for any number of reasons.
but i accept that there are some places in which the longevity of openness and ability to benefit is a transitory and utterly fragile thing. and among that short list, the games are first named.
it was a heavy and harsh lesson, delivered over time repeatedly, but only accepted when delivered by a small handful in an extremely concentrated series of events. and even then, i admit, i fought it. tooth and claw, i fought it, with something approaching a despairing madness.
it took me a while to get perspective. to understand that it wasn’t an ‘all or nothing’ situation. i suppose that will sound sadly funny. or perhaps just sad. there are many who will bray laughter and quote the inevitable ‘it’s just a game’. i sigh. yes, you’re absolutely right — it IS just a game. most people do not play games except but to distract themselves from the various sufferings of life… to escape. admitted, accepted, and acknowledged.
in the process, my interest in games has withered and died. i suppose it could be called arrogance. perhaps it is. i do not like to think so, but i suppose the case could be made. i give only one thought in rebuttal — what better place to aspire to deliver thoughts of hope, gestures of care, and actions of compassion than a place in which most everyone is seeking distraction and escape from suffering?
but it is too bald a thing. i understand better now. it’s rather like reminding by creating something that feels so good that it actually hurts because you do not or cannot believe such things could ever ‘be real’. the very venue ultimately destroys the attempt simply by being as it is — fantasy, illusory, and impermanent.
which brings me gently to the slender thread of insight that utterly severed my interest.
you see, all things ARE impermanent. and it is the attempt to evade that knowledge that creates suffering. and the very act of presence in a place where the entire fabric OF interaction is to build and sustain illusion as permanency, to provide a space in which to delude oneself and quite literally hide from it… regardless the best of possible intentions, it simply to contribute to it and sustain it.
yeah, i know, i think too fucking much. and i do know there are those who never as much as breathe upon any of this, who can and do ‘just play the game’ and take it or leave it. but i also know from direct, personal experience that those blessed ones are damn few and their numbers in the specific genre of which i speak is rarer still.
i think about all the studies that have repeatedly said this… and i remember how angry they used to make me. derision and disdain by science, or so it seemed in many moments. and i sit here, now, and laugh at myself. as usual, having to learn the hard way and kicking and screaming every step.
on the other hand, roleplay itself is forever being shored up as helpful, beneficial, and hopeful… and i comfort myself with this as best i can. this and the memories of lives saved and changed over the years. it wasn’t an impossible thing… simply a highly transitory one.
but in the end, i don’t suppose there’s much difference, and to be sure the things i have seen and experienced in the last years of my ‘gaming career’ have proven to me beyond doubt that any effort toward such ends is much better devoted in spaces where the support of outright fantasy and illusion is minimal.
i have recently tested this upon myself. reactivating only to on rare occasion visit and challenge myself with it in the name of verifying or overturning it for myself. unless you know me, you have no idea the stringent process that speaks of, even as i do not further quantify it.
without exception, those who remain have returned to the things that best distract. others have broken entirely and are no longer present. in more hopeful moments, i tell myself perhaps they found the same conclusions and did so without feelings of heaviness, anger, or loss. those i am still in touch with, the relationships that bridged the gap, they do confirm these thoughts and i am quite thankful for this… it was a needed, external confirmation. helpful to the process.
and here, a crooked smile, for in this, the recurrent resonance and meaning of a recent phrase chimes softly… oh synchronicity, you are such a devoted thing, even as your presence is sometimes difficult to bear.
i am no longer a gamer. but then, in all honesty, i do not think i ever truly was.