How to Grieve a Tragedy

By Stephen Bucaro

Bad things happen to good people. Have you lost your job or are facing bankruptcy? Has a cherished relationship ended or you have gone through a divorce? Maybe you received diagnosis of a serious health problem. Or maybe you are mourning loss of a loved one. Unfortunately, these painful events are part of life.

If you have to endure such a tragedy, maybe you can find solace in your friends and in your faith. There is no way to completely avoid pain of a tragic event, but I offer you a way to work through pain. If a friend or loved one is grieving, you can pass this message on to them.

Your should deal with grief in three phases. You should carry on each phase for exactly 21 days before moving on to next phase. Why 21 days? Because studies have shown that if an individual does same thing for 21 consecutive days, it becomes a habit. That is amount of time required to make a permanent life change.

Phase 1: Don't think about event that is causing your grief. You may be forced to think about it in some way in order to take care of business related to event. But otherwise don't think about it for first 21 days. If event comes to mind, think to yourself "I don't want to think about this right now", and dismiss thought from your mind.

By Marc Prensky © 2004 Marc Prensky

“The three words that best describe me are ‘athletic,’ ‘smart,’ and ‘GameBoy-addicted.’” – A 10 year old

A great many parents are concerned that electronic games their kids play are teaching kids “negative” messages such as aggression, violence, and isolation from real people. I want to illustrate here how computer and video game playing, can have positive effects on kids. This includes even “addictive” game playing associated with many of these games. The learning from these games is well worth effort kids put in playing them, and kids typically sense this at some level, which is one reason they fight so hard for their games.

One key lesson many of their games is teaching them is value of people working together and helping each other. To illustrate how this occurs, I will use one particular game, Toontown, as an example.

Toontown (www.toontown.com) is Walt Disney Company’s entry into Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) category. For non-initiated, that means a computer game that supports thousands of players online simultaneously, all of whom can see and interact with each other. A key feature of these worlds is that they are “persistent,” meaning that worlds continue to exist and change whether or not you are there, just any other place in real world.

[Note: There are two types of multiplayer online games, both of which have their advantages. One type, “multiplayer” game, lets you interact with a limited group of people, such as those on your team or squad, in a game world that typically exists for only time you are playing. The game America’s Army is a good example of this. The second type, “massively multiplayer” game, lets you interact with everyone you meet in ongoing world. Massively multiplayer games like EverQuest, Asheron’s Call, and Dark Age of Camelot have captured time and imaginations of hundreds of thousands of US teenage and older players. The Korean massively multiplayer game Lineage has over 4 million registered users, often with up to half a million players on-line at once. The players typically meet in relatively thinly-populated areas of very large and often interconnected virtual worlds, so even with these huge numbers, it is not like pushing your way through Times Square on New Year’s Eve.]

Toontown is first massively multiplayer game designed specifically designed for younger kids (pre-teens, I think, though they don’t specifically say.) In addition, many older kids and even adults enjoy playing it. In game you create, name and dress a character, and then you take it out to play in virtual world. Your character is representation (“avatar”) of you playing in world – it is “you” that other players know.

Although if you wanted to you could spend your entire time in Toontown merely running around virtual world, “object” of game is to defeat “Cogs,” members of evil gang that wants to take over town. The Cogs to fight come in many varieties and strengths. To defeat a Cog you employ “gags”– such as squirt bottles or pies in face – that you purchase with jelly bean currency that you earn in a number of ways.

In your early days in Toontown, when you have earned relatively few gags, you typically run around alone, deciding when to confront a low-level Cog you pass in street. (You do this by running into it.) You and Cog then square off and do battle, taking turns throwing gags at each other. If you defeat Cog, he explodes and you are rewarded with points towards additional gags. If Cog defeats you, you “die,” which means you lose all your gags (although, importantly, you do not lose “experience” you attained – i.e. types and levels of gags you are allowed to purchase and use.)

There are a lot of other twists, but that’s essentially game: Earn and buy gags, use them to fight Cogs.