video gamer rules for life

I have a good friend who enjoys video games. He is active, creative and productive in the real world too. However he often shows me how gamers approach life and ‘meat-space’ (vs meta-space) quite differently from those of us who do not and have not spent time video gaming.

If you don’t like how things are going in their world, turn the game off or start a new one. In our world, we figure out another approach for our life, the challenge in front of us, or the direction we were going, then forge ahead. We sometimes have to drag an old burden along for a while, but eventually pull our way clear.

A new idea for a business, tool-set or skill-set in my world requires extraordinary effort. That is why entrepreneurs are not common. We typically work a full time job that is our rock in the roaring stream of life while we use evenings and weekends to build our new enterprise. That is how night school came into being. We worked 40-hour day jobs, building new skills in facilities designed around serious people.

The gamer automatically resorts to pulling the plug on a tiresome game, to begin a new one with different selection of weapons, tools and skills selected from the game’s starting menu. Computer programmers, graphic artists and game designers facilitate their rebirth.

Nobody programs our world. There are no Do-Overs. Strengths are not picked off a menu, but built inside ourselves.

Not as easy.

Not for the soft.