I admit that I was more than a little worried about the rapid onset throat pain, but today it is hurting less.  I stayed home from work yesterday and today, drinking soup and doing some meditation.  If this is what we here in Norway call “3 days throat illness”, it should end tomorrow.  But even if not, I will be happy if it continues to withdraw at the current pace.

My vocal cords are still feeling kind of sandy, and I have been automatically trying to clear them a lot today.  It is almost impossible not to, it is like a reflex. Hopefully this won’t do too much damage.

I have also spent the last two days reading through my enormous Sims 2 archives, more exactly the Micropolis Prosperity Challenge.  I have returned to the game a little after that.  It may sound strange, but when I felt really ill and I thought back at my recent life to see if there were things that were not tinged with any regret, I saw this among them.  I feel that I truly got across some of my metaphysics and many of the values that I keep and that have contributed to my own happiness and that of many others.

Micropolis (meaning “very small town”) is a story, made in collaboration by me and the little people in the computer, about a few families who have lost loved ones and all they owned in a natural disaster.  Uneducated, friendless and mired in debt, they start building a new community under the guidance of a guardian angel that shows them how to realize their own inner potential to build an utopia on earth. By helping each other, learning useful skills and communing with their guardian angel, they make progress against seemingly impossible odds.  (This was all written before I had heard of Happy Science, by the way. ^_^)

Rereading it from the start, I was amazed to see how some of the things I said on the first pages were realized later in the game, long after I had written it, and without any prompting from me. The little computer people went off and did it by themselves, as if they had really heard my voice.  Or as if I had inadvertently seen their future.  Or as if someone above either of us had played us both according to a plan neither of us could see…

If I am treated like I have treated my sims, I am fairly optimistic about my life and, to some extent, even my afterlife.  And in some ways, it really looks that way. I know I joked that I treated them like I wanted to be treated myself, except they were not allowed to eat snacks.  And behold, I had to reduce my favorite snack intake due to the “fat poisoning” illness.  Well, I still snack, but rarely on snacks, if you know what I mean.  And I make more meals, just like my sims.  So it seems to work both ways…

And like the Sims of Micropolis, I have had years of amazing happiness.  That time still lasts.  Even now, I love my life.  I am not only afraid of death, although there is still a worry that I may have to pay for my idle years and for the weaknesses I hid in the dark.  But if I were to spend my afterlife with the Voice that taught me how to find happiness, I can stand an eternity of that. For now, however, I know from experience that I can have this happiness in the current life. And I am not eager to give that up.