There’s nothing wrong with a little fabricated identity … in fact it can be quite useful!
Courtesy of Wikipedia: This is the cover art for Use Your Illusion I by the artist Guns N’ Roses. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the label, Geffen Records, or the graphic artist(s).
His holiness the Dalai Lama (always best to give religious figures their full title, lest you suffer a Rushdie-esque ‘Religio-Vendetta’) once said that all suffering is relative. In India, the land of his exile since 1959, the major causes of death are malnutrition and curable diseases; whereas in the West a major culprit for inviting the Reaper round to do what he does best is that most dastardly silent ‘s’! That’s right, Stress! There is an argument, then, for reinterpreting Shakespeare’s famed utterance “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players” (As you like it 2.7)
Considering the ol’ Bard was living in a time of considerable stress – what with limited civil rights for the masses and death rather than pregnancy being the meaning of ‘coming up a cropper’ in courtship – perhaps he didn’t mean to emphasise our futile presence as pawns on this tumbling blue marble as much as he meant to mock the seriousness with which we embrace our trifling little roles. In his 1922 novel Siddhartha, Herman Hesse put his main character’s entrepreneurial success down to the fact that he “looked upon (business) as a game, the rules of which he learned precisely, but the contents of which didn’t touch his heart.” By avoiding the emotional peaks and troughs brought upon by taking life too seriously, Siddhartha (whose name is a compound of ‘achieved meaning/wealth’) stampeded towards riches and success far beyond his aim; all the while managing to keep the blood pressure down to a happy trickle.
“Riches destroy the ignorant, yet not those who seek the further shore.” (Dhammapada, #355)
That Buddhism has its share of decent advice for daily life won’t come to many as much of a surprise but some of the specific wording might. His Holiness the Dalai Lama (consistency is key!) instructs everybody to “learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.” Not something you’d imagine coming from a reverent vegetarian and you’d be right! This is one remarkably clued up monk when it comes to modern life. And he’s right! Approaching work, of all things, as if it is one big game which can be won by anyone can force the proletariat to take a rearward step and open the old blinkers to potentials.
It’s a sweet coincidence then, that most twenty-first centuriasts have at some time been subject to – or are in fact unapologetic lovers of – video games. Whether that’s because of a yearning for escapism or a strange fetish for unnaturally buxom cartoons, the fact remains that video games are prolific and they’re more detailed and challenging than ever. In a recent article in WhatCulture! one writer artfully makes the point (ten of them, in fact) that playing video games can make you better at life. This writer would, if he may be so blatant, contribute an eleventh. With the course of games attempting to equal the linearity of the real world by forcing the player to make decisions with unchangeable consequences, the player is required to think with due clarity about the possible outcomes of his actions. Albeit his pre-designed actions, but still.
It seems a leaf could/should be taken out of the book of your virtual self, since, although a poorer eventual outcome in a game can be annoying you’re more likely to lean towards the ‘Devil-May-Care’ end of the spectrum in virtual reality since the worst that can happen is your pixels meet a pixelly-end! If one could employ a similar ambivalence towards Beelzebub’s chagrin in the 9-5 then the fear of losing a job one hates will be the N64 to our PS3.
“I’m not a number, I’m a free man!”
In fact, you’re a bit of both. Proof of which can be found in any contract which dastardly proffers the caveat ‘Permanent’ next to your job title. The average employee, especially in times of merger or liquidation, is actually more of an equation of numbers than the simplicity of ‘The Prisoner’ fame:
With the knowledge of such tenuousness stamped indelibly on the catalogue card of our minds we’re free to look upon our chosen career as a healthy succession of ‘wins’ and ‘losses’ rather than cling to it like a petrified gibbon on a branch teetering above a gaping volcano mouth. A day’s wins and losses can be as large or miniscule; as private or as far-reaching as you like but they must be counted with lustre. Take an average working day. Count wins from the smile you get from that girl you bump into on the train thrice weekly to a commendation from your supervisor. The losses, from equally meagre occurrences and tally them up. Providing the wins outnumber the losses you’re a success. Seek out the wins as if you’re controlling yourself via binary and, before long, you’ll be taking calculated risks without the blood-pressure spikes.
Ultimately, a little less seriousness and more pragmatism can go for miles before running out of steam. This isn’t to say that it’s an employee’s market out there, getting a job nowadays can be as easy and painless as escaping a thumb screw. But a healthy appreciation of the inevitability of failure will allow for more of them to be avoided and those that can’t be avoided can be cherished as the diamante pub ammo they are.
Failure = Funny!
Take one poor enthusiastic soul who was recently asked to interview for the position of ‘Logistics Manager’ for a large supply company. Making sure large orders of, let’s say, ‘stuff’ is ordered from the supply centre to reach stores at a certain time was the nature of the beast and the interviewee was harbouring plenty of experience of said task-mastery in his upper storey. With sweat-ridden palms he was tentatively close to something like confident after a successful Stage 1 & 2. Then poor sap trundled into the interview room for the tête-à-tête. “Imagine for a second it’s 4:50pm on a Friday,” the unnervingly kind interviewer proffered “you receive a phone call from ASCO Supermarket ordering 500,000 units of Boca-Bola Beverages for Monday morning! What do you do?!” Without missing a synaptic cleft, our chap retorts, “Call my manager!” During his drive home he sang with endearing jocundity at his prospects, despite having scuttled his own titanic efforts by painting himself as a ‘Friday afternoon task-dodging passer-upper’ to his would-be employers.
Although the company later begrudgingly sent him a rejection email of more than two words he set his friends alight with laughter and took his own misfortune on the chin to fight again another day. He approached his next interview with a sprig of ‘Cavalier’ tucked into his belt and his calm-thinking under pressure led him to success elsewhere, eventually. He played the game to win and lost. Then he played the game for the game and is now nimble-footing his way to the top; using his illusion of competency even when he’s sat in a meeting with full knowledge that he’ll later have to look up most of the words used by his superiors. Life’s a game, play it like one!
Caution: Choosing a GTA illusion for some supposedly anonymous skulduggery will undoubtedly find you arrested; where I will inevitably lose my job and befriend a maniacal homeless victim of your crime who leads me through New York on a quest to retrieve a fictitious Holy Grail from somebody’s private library. So please don’t. Using online avatars to troll and lavish forums and comments pages with your spelling and grammar mistakes will ensure you never have sex again. And finally, there is a big difference between ‘using your illusion’ and ‘believing your delusion.’ Use it for mutual benefit and you’ll be golden!
N.B. No gibbons were hurt in the making of this article.