The Simerican dream.

This may surprise some, but perhaps not those who have read my ongoing autobiography. See, I came across this promotional video on YouTube, for the expansion pack The Sims 3: Generations that I have written about recently. Naturally I watched it in full-screen mode on my biggest monitor.

“Live life to the fullest” Sims 3 Generations trailer / YouTube.

By the end, where his life flashes before his eyes, tears were rolling down my cheeks. Not tears of sadness, really, or at least mostly not. It’s just that the little movie so beautifully sums up the life of 4-dimensional humans. What you probably call “ordinary people”, those who don’t live a purpose-driven life or have a mission on Earth or anything like that. You and me, we are to some degree outside of this: We have a detachment, like someone who act in a play and know it is a play. We can get impatient with ordinary people and they may always remain the eggs they threw long ago.  We don’t see the beauty of the merely human life because we only see bits and pieces of it.

So that’s what happened. Watching this, I suddenly saw the beauty of ordinary human life when seen as a whole.

There is a widespread belief that when you die, you see your life flash before your eyes. I have had a concept of how this works, but not why it would be a good thing. This little movie showed me that. Because there is a hidden beauty in the four-dimensional life (some lives more than others, admittedly) which cannot be easily seen as it goes on. In a way, it is like looking at a painting from the side. No matter how masterful the painting, if you see it almost completely from the side, you cannot see what it is supposed to show. When you move to stand in front of it, suddenly the beauty of it strikes you.

It is that way with life. Seeing it as it passes slowly by is like seeing a painting from the side, or to use another metaphor, it is as if you can only see the paint brush with the color that is on it right now, and your vague memories of what colors were on it before, but the canvas is hidden to you. But the canvas, the fourth dimension, is where the picture emerges.

How beautiful humans are, and this world in which you live!

You probably won’t have the same revelation even if you watch the same movie. I am pretty sure that wasn’t what it was meant for, either. But for me, each time I watch it, my eyes are filled with tears at the beauty and brevity of human life.