Proposal for a VR Simulation
Imagine that some portion of your life is spent lying on a beach or in a house there, where the sound of water flows in through half open windows. Lazy, warm, sea breezes take with them the scent of soft, fresh water, the taste of dirt, of sweet blossoms. Everything here is familiar to you; you recognize the diverse, pastoral setting, the countless ways the sun may race or meander or float across the sky, the feeling of fear and the feeling of comfort. The little things that make our world ours. The season is summer, one of four, characterized by hot nights, rain, a feeling of freedom, and that the days will go on forever. You know this as you lie awake, maybe between soft sheets or a sweaty, polyester sleeping bag. Maybe wondering why birds don’t sing at night or if this familiar place is haunted by a relative, long gone.
Imagine that if you walked outside, you would see a clear, moonless sky of summer constellations blazing over the water. It would be the most beautiful, most powerful piece of your identity. In that moment, at the edge of the universe, you would finally know yourself, for sure this time. How you relate to the sun and it’s rushed or meandering paths across the sky. How you, like all of us, were born from the Earth. You want to believe that when death finally finds you, you will be at peace, and have fulfilled your greatest potential and made the world a better place. Or, at least to be remembered. But, you don’t remember it this way. In that memory, did you ever walk out to see the stars? Did you lie in your bed or tent with your lover hoping the night would last forever? Were you glad to be there, and nowhere else?
This is the beginning of the world as you see it. There is hopeless possibility and a beautiful dream to have everything you have ever wanted. Wealth, fame, power, and success would come easily to you, but the notion of happiness wouldn’t. Of course, you would always believe you knew who you were destined to be, trapped in the conviction of your reality. It made sense to you that happiness would find you, after all. You had put in all this work and everyone else you knew was always smiling, always posting about their wonderful life, wonderful children, wonderful spouses. Even about you. You are addicted to the kind of “fame,” the rush you get about reading how wonderful you are.
You try what seems to be everything. You work harder, you work less hard, you pick up a hobby, you volunteer your time, you get a promotion. But, for no other explanation than that your existence is a failure, you are unhappy, unfulfilled.
At night you fall asleep in a stale room. Even when the windows are open, no scents, sweet or even bittersweet filter in. Believe in yourself, you can say over and over again, each time you say it getting simultaneously more and less sure that yourself is something worth believing in. You listen to the silence of the world as if your room in it’s place is the last refuge on Earth. You believe it. There is no other safe place. You wonder about death, even though it is still a long ways off.
Sometimes as you pass people in the street, you think about our perception of the world. How perception is reality and reality is perception and we can only understand time as it is processed by our brains, not as any real thing that exists. Isn’t it weird, you wonder, how things our so relative? Seven feet height is so tall in humans, but laid out across a sidewalk or patch of grass, seven feet isn’t as long after all.
Imagine that at some time in the very near future, you will be in a bathroom, most likely one with blue, white, and yellow tiles and three stalls. There is a paper towel dispenser, but it doesn’t work so you have to use the blow dryer on the occasion you wash your hands after using the toilet. Imagine the door can be locked from the inside. Imagine what it would be like to have a gun and to stare into the mirror at yourself and wonder if what you see is true. Maybe you pinch your cheek for the fifth time and try to remember the name of your fifth grade teacher. Is your experience, like anyone’s, like your fifth grade teacher’s, meaningful? Is there a reason to believe in your own reality?Imagine you are going to commit suicide.
What can you do, then, with closed eyes, shaking hands? Take yourself back to the place of safety, the place of possibility? How did, of all the choices you took and all the roads you traveled, you end up here at this moment? You feel the weight of the world for the first time as if it were your last chance. Quite possibly, all paths led to this moment, if not in a bathroom, then in your home wrapped in safety and comfort. Then, nothing of your past matters. You know only one path leads onward, but it is a broken path, twisted, muddy, painful. What now, dreamer, dreaming? What is possible for you?
