A Second Chance on Second Life

I miss my childhood imagination, how easily I transformed from the reality of youth to make believe until Mom rang the cowbell that signaled dinner. Life was carefree when I could postpone studying for my spelling test after school to walk to the top of the block with my neighbor and best friend, Allie. At the large brick house owned by a quiet old woman on the corner, Allie and I would play among the large trees and sometimes dress up to pretend to be older girls, or a boy and a girl, or anything that allowed us to be different from our eleven-year-old selves in the span of an afternoon.

However, as adults, where did we now go to flex our muscles of imagination? A friend explained Second Life to me, a virtual world launched in 2003 by Linden Lab, where people choose avatars, spend money to dress themselves better, and allow themselves to teleport or fly anywhere in the world. I wondered why adults would pay honest dollars for real estate that didn’t exist. This was the concept behind Second Life that I had yet to discover—that just because you couldn’t touch it with your hands, was it any less of an experience?

Weeks ago, at a home-cooked dinner that tasted delicious on my tongue, a group of us sat around the table discussing this and the other merits behind virtual communities. Were they stealing us away from intellectual conversations over candlelight like these for conversations we had to type? My argument was that by getting to know people through Facebook, instead of face-to-face, or participating in Second Life, human beings might opt out of navigating the here and now. I saw it as possible evasion behavior to allow people to remain disconnected on our First Life plane. Others around the table disagreed, saying that Second Life was where people could try being alternative versions of themselves. After listening to their arguments, I got myself an avatar, started flying around, and watched to see if my imagination returned.