I think it would be true to say that none of my family and few of my friends understand why I love Second Life in the way that I do.  I find that most of them think that I live in a fantasy world, and others think that it is a game that I play.   I find that online experience is rather like religious faith… unless you get it for yourself, you just don’t get it. 

One of the big benefits that Second Life has given me, as a home educator, is the chance to meet and socialise with people I would never had had the opportunity to meet in real life.  All the people I meet have come into Second Life for reasons of their own, and the reasons are as varied as the people.  I know people who are housebound due to an illness or disability, who are able to meet others through the medium of Second Life.  They can choose to make their physical problems a problem in Second Life too (some avatars have wheelchairs) or they can free themselves in the virtual world and spend their time dancing, or in some other "physical" activity like skating or cycling.

Some people with autistic spectrum disorders have found Second Life has tranformed their view of the world.  They are able to cope with interaction with people in a virtual world, where you can control how much information or how much of a scene you are seeing, and for some the ability to talk to other people on an even footing has been a revelation.

People with physical traits which prejudice others against them can find socialising in a virtual world very liberating.  For everyone, there is the chance to make your avatar a lot younger, or a lot older than your real life self, to experiment with your appearance, to play with it.  Some people have found that being able to be a woman or a man in Second Life when their actual gender is different has been a very positive thing for them.  Other people find that being able to adopt a non-human, animal or fantasy character avatar is more in keeping with how they want to be.

The interesting thing about Second Life is that everyone you see has chosen to appear the way that you see them.  It has to be admitted that there are some prejudices in the virtual world too… some people seem to have a prejudice against anyone who hasn’t changed their appearance at all, others disllike avatars which have a lot of sparkly bling type jewellery, or a lot of fancy particle effects, others dislike particular subcultures like furries.

I have found people to be surprisingly generous, open and kind in Second Life.  It has impressed me that people are accessible and open to others, no matter what their status or profession in real life.  Currently that offers a wonderful variety of experiences in getting to know people.  Those who haven’t visited virtual worlds often seem to have the impression that "knowing" someone in Second Life is somehow an artificial or unreal experience.  It’s something which causes some psychological confusion when you first enter the world, because you are lacking many of the triggers and clues that you rely on in real life, like body language, accents, emotional expression in the voice etc.

One of my friends in Second Life, who is a lecturer at University, has a theory that Second Life is the same as real life, we just think it’s different.  He points out that we have no real way of knowing how people are in real life, we just think we do. The assumptions we make about other people due to their body language, appearance and accent are just as likely to be wrong as they are to be right. 

Interestingly, many academics and professionals in Second Life seem to be working towards ways of ensuring that people can look exactly as they do in real life, adding voice capabilities, allowing people to become ever more realistic in their avatars by basing them on real life photographs, linking the environment to the real life environment.  Most people I meet don’t see that as a positive thing, they think that more and more realism will detract from the world.

In many ways, talking to and getting to know someone in Second Life can be a purer experience than in real life, because it is an interaction which is separate from their roles in real life, their position or job, their appearance and their accent or even nationality.  Talking to someone in Second Life, you are dependent upon what someone says about themselves.  Of course, just as in real life, people are not always what they seem… but that is really a given in SL… when you can be a vampyre or a tiger, a robot or a lithe 25 year old, it is understood that you may not be — or in all likelihood aren’t — what you seem.

For adults, Second Life offers a safe place to meet people, where you aren’t in any physical danger, and can explore things which you might not feel free to in real life.  You can take risks, meet people and introduce yourself to strangers, you can find friends or spend your time in solitary pursuits.  In Second Life there is not reason to do anything because someone has told you to or you feel you ought:  you have choices, always.  You need only have as your friends the people you feel you have something in common with, you need only do those things you want to do.  You can’t be forced to do anything at all.

I have found the virtual world very liberating and very inspiring.  I have made friends from all over the world, and I have learned a great deal from them.  I have learned an enormous amount about myself too, in the time I have spent there.  It is a place where you can play with ideas of identity and experiement with it, but most people find pretty quickly that they value truth and honesty in other people, and that this has an impact on how they appear.  I don’t mean that everyone immediately starts to try to recreate their real life appearance in Second Life:  I am talking about truths which come from inside.  This may mean that a transgendered person will feel happier and more honest in an opposite-sex avatar, whereas someone who didn’t mind what sort of avatar he arrived in, and made a busty blonde female avatar, pretty soon wishes to change back to a male one.

For many people with small children, and for many home educators, social life revolves around our children, and so contact and conversation with other adults is at a premium, and Second Life can provide contact with others that is missing from real life.  More than that, it would be possible to set up groups which can allow home educators to collaborate and consult each other, building projects, discussing subjects of interest, building up information and resources for others.  The possibilities for co-operation and collaboration are endless.

The most exciting aspect of the grid, is that you can search for the way of being in Second Life that suits you personally, and then discover that you have been making those choices, unconsciously in real life, you just haven’t been aware that they were choices.  For me, Second Life has raised my awareness in ways that are unexpected.  I think it has the potential to do that for everyone.  I am hoping that someday soon, one of my friends and family will try it and find that out for themelves.