I took a survey today, about spirituality in Second Life. One of the questions was 'Are your relationships in SL as important to you as your relationships in earthly life?' and yes, they are, some of them really are.
SL relationships can be very intimate, some grows to be like that even before the RL facts gets disclosed fully. You meet the essence of the person in SL before you meet the facts. Facts that maybe would have turned you away, or just made you ignore that person.
Sometimes a relation grows beyond the real life facts... to a point where 'shapes' doesn't matter anymore. And when the facts then gets disclosured, you still know that this was the same person all along.
As Rob Danton put it in his blog, SL is both a masquerade and a regular street. But a second life friendship is also very different from a real life one on many levels.
Were traveling on a journey without a map. relationships of virtual worlds can really be 'a passage to brilliant places filled with light and who can tell what wonders...'
One thing I found that works very well is the 'no promises' frame. It would be so easy to cheat, run away, make another alt. But all that is not needed if you really set the ones you love free. It takes balance, honesty and huge buckets of empathy to make it work. And it takes refraining from scheduled meetings. 'No promises' has the good point that you won't get disappointed because there’s no promise to be broken, and when you meet up its just icing on the cake.
Another benefit is the presence. When you don't know when you will meet again, all you really have is the present moment. And to be present together is really the greatest gift...
How often are we truly present together?
4 had something to say:
Actually, I took the same survey and I think it falls down in a couple of places...
"Do you consider your second life to be as important as your earthly life?"
It's a strange question, because it is all just part of one life, my life.
If they said "Do you consider your social life with a certain group of friends to be as important as your life?" it wouldn't make much sense at all, but that's really what they're asking.
Virtual friendships are really as important as real ones. But that's only because they are real. For me it's where the illusory dichotomy between "immersion" and "augmentation" really falls apart...
I have friends I met though work, friends from school, from university, friends who I know because they live nearby (in RL)... and friends from Second Life.
Sure, the virtual world is a separate space in which you can get immersed, but despite being called "Second Life", we only have one life. The virtual world can become part of your life but surely it can never be totally separate.
It's the immersive quality of SL that makes it more integrated with my life, I'm more intimate with friends there than I ever would be on Flickr. We can do stuff together, make stuff together... and I dream about them.
Some of those I first met in SL, I have gone on to meet in RL. I have learned that it makes no difference, I have not been surprised. So far they've been the same person in both worlds, it just means less typonese.
I agree with Kean, though. It is uncharted territory, what we are putting ourselves through. I'm sure it will become an important part of the human experience. Relationships in virtual worlds have a special quality. Almost like it's your imagination meeting someone else's. There is magic, and I don't mean particles :)
But balance is really important... one of the survey questions was:
"If you could, would you spend all of your time in SL?"
I think the magic is, like Kean says, dependent on the framing. When SL is a bonus level in the game of life, then it's beautiful and enriching - it really is the icing on the cake. If the whole cake was the icing, then, it might make you sick pretty quickly
The "No Promises" frame helps to keep it balanced. It's not even a promise to never promise... it just seems like the natural way to be in a world like this. It takes the focus off the future and makes you feel the joy of every second.
The balance needs empathy, honesty and all those things Kean mentions, and it needs a light touch, too. If you try to hang on too tight, it will evaporate in your hand.
Another nonsensical question from the survey:
"With sufficiently advanced technology to resolve the problems you currently experience in SL would you consider SL to be heaven?"
Errrrm, no... but... According to Buddhists, one of the six realms of existence is the realm of the gods:
"The gods are lost in a heady sense of lazy joy and self-centred pleasure.... All needs seem to be met and all desires sated.... the gods become trapped in pleasure and the pursuit of pleasure. They have no sense of the reality beneath their experience. Lost in meaningless diversions and pleasures, they are distracted and do not turn to the path of liberation."
Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep - Tenzin Wangal Rinpoche
Sound familiar? :p
Hello! You have a motivating blog! I am happy to visit it.
That's a great post. I have to agree that when you try to constrain someone in SL they simply evade it through other means.
I have been on both sides of the fence on this, and both sides are hard to be. Sometimes it is hard to share someone you really like.
Thanks a lot Wangbu :).
And Veyron... I agree it's not allways easy... but the alternative seems pretty hard too.
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