Dreams

I hold a belief in the unfortunate fact that the human mind is the most powerful thing ever to come into existence. It controls the world because it controls exactly how we perceive it. Want to forget some tragic memory? Convince yourself it never happened. Want to realize an impossible dream? Convince yourself that, somewhere in the crevices of your past, it you lived it.

I’ve woken, as many of us have, from dreams in a state of complete panic. I’m thinking that I have to be somewhere, finish some assignment. Sometimes I’m running from the police and wake with cops on my tail and only moments from my safehouse. I rarely have pleasant dreams. It’s unfortunate.

Sometimes, a few days after waking from these sorts of dreams, I remember them. I remember them quite vividly. And I have to actively remind myself that these things never happened. I’m not an outlaw. I wasn’t lying on a cold sidewalk counting the seconds until my death. I handed in that essay four and a half years ago. But it’s only when I actively remind myself that those things didn’t happened “in reality” (at least not my reality)[1] when I accept that they weren’t real.

What if I didn’t stop myself from believing? Better yet, what’s stopping me from just inserting whatever I want into my mind and believing it to be true?

To talk about the other kind of dreams, “life goals,” I’ve had millions of those. I’ve wanted to become an astronaut, football coach, lawyer, author, journalist, pianist, telecaster, hermit, government lobbyist, politician, television writer and a stand-up comedian. And that’s really just in the last year or so.

I think I have no dreams (career aspirations). I don’t really care about that stuff, even though it’s probably one of the very few things that someone can objectively argue is worth caring about. I don’t want all or any of those things, but I understand that I need to want things. So I look at my situation and I decide. Did I just think of a reasonably funny joke? Did I just walk past a poster for an open-mic night? Cool, I’ll be a stand-up.

And then I really want to be a stand-up comedian. I start keeping a notebook of crappy jokes and I practice my timing in a mirror. And it’s really fun, at least to think about.

It’s like a scab. There’s a wound that hurts. The body needs to heal, so it does. You grow a nice shiny scab that covers the sore, protects it from the elements. It feels alright. Then it toughens up, the scab, and you can take the bandage off. Now it feels great. Then one day, that scab starts to get a little irritating. It isn’t permanent, and your body knows that, and it’s time to move on to something real, whatever that means.

The scab itches, and you scratch it until it peels off. Then it flutters through the air and rests on the ground.

I threw out the joke books.

That wound is still there. This is the limit of the human mind.

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[1] Let’s just say that these things happened in subconscious experiences that society has decided to call “dreams.”