Video Game

“But, PaPa, I don’t want to go outside”,
he said in his small voice
as he navigated a three dimensional
wonderland
populated with fairies and demons
and monks and warriors.
Real people playing virtual lives
on a virtual landscape
doing virtual things.

I understood his reluctance.
Nobody ever really died in there.
Magic potions and spells
renewed the body and spirit
and the only casualties
were monsters and ogres
roaming the virtual meadows
and lurking in dark corners
of virtual castles.

He wanted to avoid the harsh realities
of the physical world
where accidents happen
and people die
and insects bite
and sun burns.

How could I tell him
that the truth of life
is about the striving
and the risk

How could I tell him
that virtual happiness
was no match for the real thing?

Or was that true after all?

Maybe he would tell me
that reality was the real illusion
and that maybe wars
should be fought on virtual battlefields
where nobody dies.