The RPG of Life and the Choices We Make

 Yesterday, I shot and killed my son with an automatic laser pistol. Before you call the police on me, let me explain.
     I was playing the RPG "Fallout 4" on my computer. This is a PC Role Playing Game where you take on the persona of a former military veteran who was cryogenically frozen for two hundred years and then woke up to find a post-nuclear holocaust world. Right before he wakes up and the game really begins, he has to wake up and watch his wife be murdered and his son kidnapped before he's frozen again. This leads to the main questline of the game which is avenging his wife and rescuing his son, Shaun.
     What you don't know at the beginning of the game is that Shaun's kidnapping (and his wife's murder) occurred sixty years before your character actually escapes the underground vault where he was frozen. In that time period, Shaun was raised in a safe, relatively loving and caring environment where he grew up to be a respected scientist and eventually became the director of that facility, the Institute. The Institute in the year 2287 is deep underground beneath the ruins of the "Commonwealth Institute of Technology" and has been doing unethical experiments and occasionally replacing people with "synths," artificial human beings which can be shut down or reprogrammed at their whim, robbing them of their free will. The Institute is the main antagonist faction in the game, and while you can choose to side with them, the game strongly leads you to see them as the bad guy. Which brings me back to my aforementioned murder.
       I had hoped to do this playthrough without killing Shaun. I was looking to achieve an endgame result in favor of a more freedom loving faction, the game's rather weak but well intentioned "good guys," the Minutemen. I had intended to visit the Institute, do the requisite quest, get into an argument with the now sixty year old Shaun (physically at least thirty years older than my character), and be banished from the Institute without committing (technical) infanticide. But, the game simply wouldn't let me. No matter what response I gave, Shaun just kept rolling with it and keeping me around. So, I went with it until I got stuck. The quests just wouldn't progress, and it was going to force me to choose. It was either Shaun or the freedom of everyone else in the Commonwealth. In this playthrough, I chose the Commonwealth over my son and ended his life. For the record, it's revealed in the game that he's dying of cancer regardless. Also for the record, I sided with the Institute on my first playthrough, so I know how that one ends as well. After I ended Shaun before the cancer could, the game unstuck itself and I was able to continue the main questline.
     It got me thinking though. It's not the first time I've had to make an unsavory choice in a game. Skyrim has a number of less than savory choices in order to finish a quest or achieve something. I literally committed cold blooded murder in that game on my first playthrough a couple of times because, like with Shaun, I couldn't see a way around it. That is, I couldn't see a way around it until my next playthrough where I was able to either talk my way around it, or do something else to achieve the same result. Choices have in-game consequences which affect how the story progresses and how others in the game see your character. Trust me, it's no fun to immediately have guards try to arrest or kill you the minute you set foot in a certain province because you made a bad choice.
     Don't get me wrong, I don't play these games as a "murder hobo." I genuinely try to make the best choices possible where the most people benefit and hopefully the least amount of people die. My favorite part of Fallout 4 is genuinely helping people try and rebuild their communities and through rebuilding them also rebuilding the Commonwealth and making it a thriving, just society again. In Skyrim, those murders were committed, literally, with the best of intentions in order to either help a bunch of kids at an orphanage or prevent a really bad demonic entity from doing even worse things. I just didn't know at the time how to avoid them.
     The reality we live in is, in many respects, a lot like these RPGs. Who and what we are is a consciousness, a soul, temporarily inhabiting a physical body. What happens in this reality cannot actually harm what we actually are, the real "us" as it were, any more than what happens to my character in Fallout 4 can genuinely harm me as I sit at the computer and play it. The only thing that is "real," the only thing that truly belongs to me in this life are my responses and the choices I make. The same of true of the RPG. While nothing that happens in it is "real," nevertheless the choices I make are still mine. The responses are still mine. I can own nothing else, either in this life, or in the RPG. When I shut down the game, I take the memories and lessons of those choices with me and nothing else. When my consciousness finally leaves this body behind, I do the same. When I start the game up again with a new character, I bring those memories and lessons with me to apply to a new playthrough where I can potentially make different if not better choices and responses to produce a better outcome. If the testimonies of many people, both Near Death Experiencers and those who remember bits and pieces of their past lives (kids especially), are to be believed then I can potentially do the same upon my next "character" and "playthrough" of this life (albeit with the post-birth amnesia to a greater or lesser degree). In Fallout 4, there's really no right or wrong way to play the game. The same is true of Skyrim and nearly every other RPG. There are consequences for your choices and they can be either beneficial or harmful. The same is true of this life. We make beneficial choices and we make harmful choices and, regardless of the outcome, we learn from both what works best for everyone and what doesn't. What allows us to make real progress, and what leaves us stuck.
     We learn and we grow by the experiences we have, and no experience is wasted if we are able to put it to use in making more progress, even if it's a "don't do that again" experience. This is how wisdom is built up and accumulated over time, and potentially over many lifetimes.
     One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to unlock the ending where neither the Institute wins nor do I have to kill my son who is much older than I am. I just didn't manage it this playthrough. The same is true of this life.