As I have gotten
to be older (and at 21, I do consider myself old), I have started to realize
the connection between my own use of my time and what I value. In fact, I have
decided that the use of time determines the value of something in a person’s
life. When I was younger, I thought that
volleyball was very important to me. I spent all of my free time doing camps
and clinics, practicing with my team, and even practicing with a private coach
who was supposed to help me be a better player.
After a couple of years, I began to notice a change in m behavior. I was irritable most of the time, pushing my
friends and teammates away. It was especially bad when I was playing
volleyball- I was hard on myself, becoming enraged over every mistake that I
made. Because so much of my life was
still dedicated to volleyball, the negative impact on my attitude was seen in
all aspects of my life. My parents
worried about my health, my mental health became less stable, and my friends
became more distant. When this all
happened to me at the same time, I realized that I was no longer happy doing
what I had dedicated so many hours of my life to. Not being happy doing those things made my
life miserable; I was using my time for something I did not care about, and it
made the values I expressed to others unclear.
Since I have gotten to college, I
have changed the way in which I understand my values. I realized that, once I stopped valuing
something that was distracting me from my own personal development, I became a
happier and more fulfilled person. I began to see that the things I valued in
life were education and supportive, positive relationships. As I began to focus more on continuing my own
education, I realized that I felt like I was at peace while working in
schools. This led to me dedicating more
of my time in schools: I did service for fun during my freshman and sophomore
years, and then continued with field experience for education classes once I
had declared my minor. Being able to
work with students and actually teach has given me a sense of purpose and
happiness that I never would have dreamed of before. When I began to use my time to do something
that I truly valued and enjoyed, my quality of life improved immensely.
I believe that Ready Player One provides an interesting look at the manner in
which people spend their time affects their lives. A fantastic, albeit crude, example of this
comes from I-r0k. He’s a jerk who tries
to seem like a seasoned OASIS player when his skills are actually lacking. He tells Aech and Wade, “If I didn’t spend so
much time offline, getting laid, I’d
probably know just as much worthless shit as you two do” (Cline 45). A
quintessential comeback of a man who has no true argument, I-r0k illustrates
the manner in which he tries to act like he values his time. While he claims that he spends a large amount
of his time having sex, this is mostly done to make it appear like he values
some sort of real world relationship over his ability to play video games
well. However, the fact that this
statement is being made in a defensive manner, combined with Wade’s
observations of I-r0k being a poseur, reveals
that this is more of a false claim. In
reality, he likely values videogames as much as the other gunters, but he lacks
the skills to make his efforts align with his values.
Another example of the connection
between values and the use of time comes from Wade when he moves into his
apartment in Columbus and does not leave for months on end. He says, “The hour or so after I first woke
up was my least favorite part of each day, because I spent it in the real world…The
sight of my tiny one-room apartment, my immersion rig, or my reflection in the
mirror—they all served as a harsh reminder that the world I spent my days in was
not, in fact, the real one” (195). Since
childhood, Wade has been immersed in the virtual reality of the OASIS, but he
has been acutely aware of the fact that it is not the true, devastated world
that he was born into. Now that the hunt
has given a way to get out of his cruel reality with riches beyond the
imagination, he has chosen to have the OASIS become the reality he truly
values. He dedicates all of his free
time to searching for the egg and the keys, blocking out the outside
world. The fact that he is disappointed
when he is forced to face reality shows how his values do not currently align
with the reality he is placed in, so he works hard to be part of a different
one that gives him the chance of a future.
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