Your Ideal Self Part Two

By E.M. Wollof
From the Game for Gain Blog Series

The difficulty with an imagination like Link's is that, while it may have been accepted as a child, the adult world tends to frown upon people like that. There was a year in college that Link lost almost every safety net he had ever known, sports, family, religion, they all fell away from him and he was left with very little to run to in his days of need.

It was during this dark time that Link noticed his roommate had a PS2. Link grew up with small bits of exposure to video games, mainly in the sports and education realm since that was his life. On that day though, he sought refuge from the storm that was his life at the time. He picked up the controller, felt the weight drop into his palms, placed his thumbs on the thumbsticks, pushed all the buttons with childhood curiosity and then turned on the machine that would act as the wind guiding his ship to safer harbors.

That day was the first of Link's new life as a gamer. He became entrenched in the community of people involved with video games, they were just like he was! Dark and imaginative in a way that was looked down upon by the outside world but celebrated in the community that he now called home. He met and fell in love with a woman that accepted him for all that he was and wanted to be without question. The happily ever after will surely follow...

NOW is where I tie in the article we read at the beginning of this two part saga. When Link sits down to play a video game today, it is not to run away from the real world, it is not to take out some aggression he feels towards the rest of humanity, it is not to degrade all of his fellow gamers...it is to fully embrace who he is after a day of hiding it away from a society that will never accept it. He spends his days in a office, suppressing the darker view of the world that he holds true, staying mute when he knows an idea could change the views of others, dreaming of freedom that lays a clock punch away.

To view video games as anything different than the average persons gateway to peace is ignorance. For the person that goes home and tends the garden, are they not doing so because they feel at peace and comfortable in their own skin when they are doing it? When the person goes to the gym to run off a day of suppression, are they not striving for the same peace and comfort?

If you have yet to find your true home, keep an eye out, there is no better feeling, no greater peace, no better ideal.

Game for Gain Series
A blog series by E.M. Wollof.Next:Some Semblance of Control Previously:Your Ideal Self Part One