Living vicariously

I have the control in my hand firmly gripped and my nimble fingers are dancing over the buttons and left, right triggers, the pupils of my eyes fully dilated , blood rushing to my face, heart beating faster to pump more blood to my brain and a sudden rush of adrenalin happens as soon as the creature from the dark forces suddenly appears from nowhere, wielding its deadly weapon and in its chilling voice utters the most horrifying of all the words-“Die”; but I am equal to the occasion, the gun is fully loaded , it takes me less than a second to aim it at its head and empty almost 20 rounds of bullets, the creature stands no chance at all and the taste of victory is sweet – first stage complete. As you would have guessed I am playing a video game I bought today, I am thrilled and excited by the mayhem and bloodshed I am going to cause from today onwards on my television screen.
But I ask myself a question -Do I have the same courage in me to banish my enemy in the face of such danger or am I brave enough to face this situation at all? Had there been a dearth of such predicaments around me I would have answered an emphatic YES but the bottom of my heart knows that mere imagining myself in such a situation gives me cold sweat but the joy I get by killing my foes on screen is simply incomparable. We were not so vicarious before but the hunger for entertainment has fuelled this mad rush to feel the excitement. Why do we watch action movies, horror movies? It is the unfulfilled desire of experiencing these emotions which drives us to feel them second hand. The Romans first got the taste of this kind of entertainment when they watched the gladiators thrown mercilessly to the hungry lions. What would they have experienced witnessing the gory sight of the hungry beasts shredding the humans to pieces? It would have been fear, excitement and joy. That was the start of humans falling prey to their vicarious side. Technology has made progress by leaps and bounds and has given us lot of ways to get entertained. 3 D movies today indicate the crest of our vicarious needs where we just do not want to sit in our seats but also desire to enter the world of Pandora(Avatar). I do not criticize these things but just want to caution ourselves that we should not indulge so much to this virtual entertainment that it drives us away from each other. Whenever there is a natural disaster or any tragedy around us, we nowadays donate money and feel good about that. Let’s not just do that but get involved more actively to the things around us and leave the virtual world to our tv sets.
Let’s stop living vicariously but start living.