After years of cluelessness my late-to-the-party self has utterly gotten sucked into playing The Sims 4. Right now I have four different games going, one of which is on its sixth generation. Most of my free time is spent on the game, hence my marked quiet on much of my social media channels lately. It’s given my creativity a much-needed jump start.
What surprises and pleases me even more is the game has reminded me of things I need to remember about real life. Here are the most important points.
- My environment matters. Just like for a sim, displaying art that is meaningful to me, cleaning my home, and organizing my home positively affect my moods.
- Sometimes doing just enough is a good thing. I am a recovering overachiever who really needs to internalize this idea! Trying to develop the highest abilities in every possible skill is overwhelming, exhausting, and probably impossible. It is good to choose some things to just be functional in and focus more time and energy on those things that are deeply meaningful.
- Developing skills takes time. While the game allows you to fast-forward through skills development, the same amount of time still passes during that fast-forward. There are no shortcuts, not even to go to the next level of ability. That’s even more true in real life, where development is not linear.
- Grieving takes time, even when doing adequate self-care. When a sim loses someone they are close to, they go through a certain number of days/hours of sadness depending on their closeness to the person. None of their other interactions or activities can shorten that time; they just have to go through it. Similarly, nothing you or anyone else does will move you through grief any faster. It will take as much time as it will take.
- Likewise, there are few shortcuts through anger. Sometimes a sim can shorten their anger by taking a cold shower or punching a giant stuffed toy, but if the anger is caused by a deep betrayal like their partner flirting with someone else, everyone needs to batten down the hatches and just let them ride it out. I was raised to be ashamed of and suppress my anger, as though it had been short-circuited. It is good for me to remember to give my anger space and healthy outlets.
- Regular, positive contact is necessary to maintain the strength of a friendly, romantic, or familial relationship. Every sim has a meter that will show the strength of their relationship (either positive or negative) to whatever sim they are interacting with. I found it interesting that in romantic relationships there are two meters: one for friendship and one for romance. If the sims do not interact much, the meters will gradually dwindle down to nothing. While it isn’t so cut-and-dry in real life, there are similarities, like romance and friendship/mutual respect being two different things which must be nurtured separately. Taking people for granted, even if you are in the same space on a regular basis, will cause your emotional connection to fade.
- Being related by genetics does not automatically make you friends. Sims which are immediate family start out with friendship meters halfway full, and those meters fluctuate depending on how well their interactions with those immediate family members go. We have a romanticized idea that immediate family is automatically emotionally close to and supportive of us. That is a lie. We need to deliberately nurture regular, positive interactions with relatives, or our emotional connections to them will fade just like with any other person.
- Life goes on after the death of a friend or loved one. There is grief. There are tears. There are periods of reflection and remembrance. And there is the rest of life, the other relationships in one’s life, and new relationships to come. Your story with that person is over (though in the game you can indefinitely interact with their ghost, sometimes in rather intimate ways, ew), but your story overall continues.
And now, if you will excuse me, I have the game running in the background and need to see what my sims have been up to while I haven’t been looking. If you play the desktop version of The Sims 4, I am wthelotus on there. I regularly upload lots, especially accessible ones, to the gallery. Add and follow me there.
