Playing With Life

Oh life is just a funny thing isn't it. And it becomes only funnier when we begin to play our lives. You know, get on the computer and start your life again for the day. If you havn't caught on yet I'm talking about the Sims. This is the game where you create your own little Sim which is the human of the game and then proceed to live life. You can look for a job, make billions of friends, and you can go shopping in the largest catalog ever for everything your Sim could ever want. So...what's the point? Is it just to live life again. I'm not sure if Sim players acutally think about the underlying meaning of the Sims. (And believe me their is one.) I myself have fallen under the spell of this lifelike game merely on the point that it was fun, for a while.

I was reading a particular author for my Language & Composition class in school. His name is Chuck Klosterman, and he writes primarily essays about a variety of topics and discussions. He's completely over analytical about EVERYTHING possible and he has a lifestyle that is...well, let's just say I would never reccomend him to anyone. But none the less, I read some of this essays and he did the exact thing I am doing right now. He analyzed the Sims and it's promblems and it began my thinking process on this game acutally.

My problems with playing the Sims are that it is impossible to settle upon my goals and the unknown goals of my Sim. I want to be successful for my Sim, climbing the career ladder, obtaining enough cash to be well off, raise his skills to amazing levels. Of course, all he wants to be is happy: well fed, entertained, clean, etc. Now don't get me wrong I want him to be happy too, but everytime I try to aspire a little in my own goals he drops in his level of happiness. If I want him to read he drops in entertainment, if I want him to paint he drops in energy, if I want him to go running he just plain becomes depressed. Come on Sim why won't you work with me.

Then when I do get promoted so much on my social ladder I am required to make friends. "Make what?!!?!" I say. It never even came to my mind that I was required to socialize with other people, and what if my Sim won't socialize? Do you even know how long it takes to form a strong relationship? I can't do that on this game, that will take way too long. Ugh. But I guess it would be good for my Sim. Not that he cares.

Klosterman ends his essay really interestingly. He ends up realizing that in his idiotic efforts to get his Sim married he realized that he tortured his Sim to the point of no return. That it was filthy, depressed, hungry, dying probably, maybe suicidal, who knows. So he makes a dramatic effect that he will let his Sim do whatever it wants now and then dramatizes his decisions to click the option button and check "Freewill."

You know I think that is the problem with my Sim. He only sees the short term effects on things. He won't and can't put himself through problems and be happy because he knows that in the end it will be better off in the end. How selfish can a Sim be? But then again this could be a great lesson for us. Nobody aspires to be a Sim someday, so that means we shouldn't be like that. We shouldn't procrastinate and we should realize what greater things await us if we just wait and stick it through.