Dreaming

I read today that, “nichts ist menschlicher, als zu trauemen.” That is, “nothing is more human than to dream.” I think that might be true. It might just be what separates us from animals and the rest of the world in which we’re immersed.

We dream. And that dreaming has caused all of human history. Our dreaming gives rise to our hopes and our desires, and along with those come fear and clinging. Everything from the most horrific war crimes to the most selfless of acts, the giving of oneself for another, comes from our dreams.

It seems that we mostly dream of better things to come. We dream that one day soon we will make more money or have a bigger house or just one more kid. Or maybe we’re on the opposite end of the spectrum and our idea of better things looks like adventures in far-flung countries that we can meticulously photograph and carefully curate on instagram or tick-tock or whatever the latest social media platform is so that we can at least convince others that our dreams are coming true, even if we don’t believe it ourselves.

But do we ever get there, to the better things? I make three times as much money as I did at my first real job, but it sure doesn’t feel like it. My current house is two and a half times as big as the first little rent house Emily and I moved into right after we were married, but somehow there was space for just as much love in that first house as our current one . And I’ve tried the other end of the spectrum, too, all to no avail. Even the pursuit of eye-catching facebook pictures via Alaskan mountaineering expeditions to the tops of some of the world’s tallest peaks or the self-satisfaction of telling tales of peering over the continental shelf into a black void that is the bottom of the world underneath 100 feet of water fail to deliver the much-sought-after dream that I have finally arrived, that everything is as as it should be, that there is nothing left to do and I can finally rest.

So I think that for now I will put aside my dreams. That sounds terribly depressing, I know, and goes straight against the whole American narrative of dreaming big and working hard to achieve that dream. Maybe putting aside my dreams makes me un-American, or maybe less human. I don’t know. But whatever the case, that model just doesn’t work any more. Nope.

Instead, I think I’m just going to quit, and be here. I’m going to quit my striving. I’m going to quit my running from suffering, quit panicking whenever hard things come my way, quit fearing the unknown, and quit the never-ending treadmill race that is the pursuit of material happiness. In their place, I think I’ll just be, right here and right now. We’re so accustomed to these old habits that it seems impossible to shed them, but why should it be? I think it’s worth the trouble, because right now is a pure and lovely place to be. It really is what we’ve been dreaming about all along. It’s the melody that snow-melt plays under rocks as it returns to the ocean, or the infinite color palette of a sunrise gently playing out on its canvas of clouds. It’s the comfort of listening to the person you love most dearly breathing gently next to you in the dark and the wonder in the way that tree leaves in the wind sound exactly like ocean waves. It’s an uncontrollable belly laugh after a raunchy joke with friends after one too many pints or the little twinge of fear, even when you’re too grown up to admit it, when you hear the first low rumbles of thunder from an approaching storm.

Right now is so damn beautiful that it breaks my heart, and I don’t want to miss it dreaming of what could be, because those things I’m dreaming of are already here.

Ground

I’m terrified.

I’m terrified of the impermanence of life, that I will die. And it’s not just that I will die, it’s that I may die too young, without getting to experience all of the things that I want to experience. I suppose I’m greedy for experience, for seeing the kids grow old and sitting on the porch with Emily when we’re wrinkly and for having a a bittersweet retirement party one day from the fire department.There are just a lot of things that I want to do still, and if I die from cancer at a young age, I won’t ever get to see them.

And not just that, but it will bring hardship on my family. I love them all, each one individually, so much so that I can’t bear the thought of being the cause of more hardship in their lives. They deserve so much happiness.

So because of those things, I am terrified. But I’m beginning to suspect that the state of terror isn’t such a “bad” one, for lack of a better word. For some reason, there’s a negative, unpleasant feeling attached to it, and I think that’s really what is so distasteful about it. When that’s removed, though, being scared is tolerable. It’s something that I can allow to be alongside me, and I don’t need to panic and immediately try to eradicate it.

And I’m surprised to say that right here, in this entirely groundless state, is where I want to be. So much suffering is caused by our attempts to find solid ground. When we allow ourselves to just not know, however, possibilities for joy and kindness and compassion open up that we never knew we’d see. But I think that only people who have been through suffering and have been forced to live without solid ground can easily choose to continue living that way. I’ve watched Band of Brothers recently, and it seems like veterans experience this, too. Suffering can free us from our conception that we should seek the pleasant and flee from the unpleasant, and this creates space in our hearts for warmth and love and gentleness.

So I think my cancer and then this crazy pandemic, which is just the particular form that suffering took in my life recently, was a great gift. It pulled the ground out from underneath me and showed me that it’s okay here. And I’m really shocked to say that I prefer it here, in the uncomfortable space of not knowing.

I have to laugh, though, when I still catch myself all the time trying to solidify things. I find that my habit of doing so is especially tenacious as it concerns my identity, and with that, my ego. I think all the time, “I really like the way I look when I do such and such,” or, “people will really think that I’m this or that kind of guy now that I’m…” I’m really hilariously vain, and I can’t shake the habit of trying to establish a self-approved identity in some way. I'm even thinking about what people will think about me when they read this. So it goes.

And that’s kind of how everything is, isn’t it? It just goes. We think we know, but we don’t. We do, but we don’t. We learn, we work, we suffer, we rejoice, and sometimes we even love purely and without ulterior motives. And at the bottom of it all there is a great impartiality to life that is both terrifying and life-giving. I don’t know what to think of it, but I don’t have to know. None of us do. That’s the sigh of relief, the exhalation when you finally lay down to rest at the end of a long day. We don’t have to know. We don’t have to decide. We don’t have to have an opinion. We just have to be, and that’s the one thing we’ve all been successfully doing since the day we were born and will continue to do until the day we draw our last breath, whether it’s after a long, blessed life or far too soon.