Friday, April 8, 2011

When the World is Too Much With Us - Finding Calm in Second Life

William Wordsworth was concerned with the increasing focus on consumerism when he championed a return to nature. I'm suggesting we follow his advice to deal with more than that.

The sheer volume of bad news in recent months has reached a decibel level much too high for many of us to continue to cope without some type of respite. Tragedies on both an individual and massive scale are bombarding us without any pauses to give our psyches a chance to heal breaches and shore up defenses.

Using Second Life to find the calm we need and the peace we lack seems, to me, to offer us an opportunity to at least temporarily reduce the noise around us. Finding an expression of nature that touches a sympathetic chord is always beneficial and it seems I needed it today in particular.

I've highlighted some of my old favourites and a couple of new ones in this post (all are Moderate maturity rating). In addition, getting on a horse and losing myself in the Calas Galadhon sims is on my list for the weekend.

You might prefer dancing or shopping to shut out the demands and tribulations of the world around us. Whatever it will take, I suggest you find some time for yourself and regroup. The problems we're dealing with will still be there when you're done but you'll be in better shape to address them. I know I will be.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great post, I know when stress reaches me I retire to my build platform/skybox, the floor is sand and the four walls are an ocean sunset... I head there and start building... and peace comes.

Honour McMillan said...

I think I need a building project! It is a great way to shut out the noise. :)

Anonymous said...

I've been pondering the thought that SL and RL shouldn't collide. Is that possible... more preferred... less preferable? For example... certain individuals bring RL issues into SL. Is that healthy... or is an unmarred SL... isolated from RL a better alternative so there is complete escape from the troubles of RL?

Great post though... and very timely indeed. Wonderful images too.

Honour McMillan said...

Avoiding the whole "augmentationist vs immersive" debate cause I'm a coward :) let me say I think it's impossible to avoid bringing pieces of the physical world with us only because we bring "ourselves" into SL.

It would, however, be wonderful if the only things that stuck as we logged in were the positive ones.