Fixing it.
I've had a thought brewing for a couple weeks now. Tuesday or Wednesday night, I had a dream that really helped gel it for me, and should make it easier to explain, because it's an idea I'd like to share.
In the dream, there is a small device wreaking havoc on "the city". Seems sort of like a large version of Lazytown, and I think it was on the coast of Antarctica, but it's not cold. Like Lazytown, there doesn't seem to be any official authorities or anything. My wife and I are like detectives or cops or superheroes or maybe just regular people that decided to do something. Anyway, we're trying to stop this device.
The device is like a little box, slightly larger than two fists together. It's black and rectangular or square. There's a little red light on it, or maybe it's shooting red lasers. The actual threat that it made wasn't consistent throughout the dream. It's shooting lasers, or emitting poisonous gas, or maybe some kind of sonic blast that kills or maims within a certain radius.
Anyway, the specifics of it seemed to drift around, as did the mood. Sometimes, it was exciting problem-solving, sometimes it was a feeling of futile struggle against impending doom. At one point, I remember kicking a bunch of people out of a toy store, cussing loudly and meanly, like the rebel cop from some late 70's movie.
Anyway, my wife and I had come up with a plan, and it involved outflanking this device. I went into the toy store and created a diversion or drew its fire, or something. Meanwhile, she, uh, bopped it or something from behind. Whatever she did, the thing got knocked to the ground and partly opened and was, at least temporarily, disabled.
The mood was reminiscent of whacking a cockroach, where you need to finish it up fairly soon, or it's going to run away again, and a half-dead roach is so much more awful than a lively one. Ew. I'm sorry I wrote that in such detail.
Anyway, I was bending over the thing, taking it apart, and looking at the electronics inside. I'm know a little about electricity, and I was trying to figure out how the thing worked, how it was wired up, how it had been built. I think I had in mind to figure out who had built it, even though there didn't seem to be a real risk of them creating another one. (Not sure why, it's just one of those dream things, where you have knowledge like this.)
The crux of the dream is my wife coming up behind me and making the very sensible point that it doesn't matter HOW the thing works, how it's constructed, what all the different components do together, how it came together - who cares? What matters is how can we disable it.
I felt a slight regret while I ripped off a bunch of blue capacitors and other components and threw them around. I knew that after tearing it apart, I would never really satisfy my curiosity about how it was built, but I also knew that was the safest thing to do, since there was no way it could possibly repair itself after I tore it up and spread it out like that. I didn't know how the capacitors were wired together, but I knew enough about electronics to know they were crucial to the device's destructive powers.
I also recall that there were a couple of EL-34 output tubes in it (which makes no real sense, since those wouldn't have fit in the box), and they were really, really old and dusty. There was some weird denouement about shipping lanes going north from Antarctica through the Pacific ocean, a bunch of weird shipping-container/barge things towed by a small boat, much like a train.
The whole point of the dream is "The details of how the destructive device are not nearly as important as what must be done to disable it."
This is especially true in interpersonal situations. I've had a few parallels recently at work, at home, with friends. I keep focusing on "How did we get here?" instead of "How do we get somewhere better?" Sometimes, a little knowledge of how it happened is helpful, but the details aren't worth obsessing over.
In the dream, there is a small device wreaking havoc on "the city". Seems sort of like a large version of Lazytown, and I think it was on the coast of Antarctica, but it's not cold. Like Lazytown, there doesn't seem to be any official authorities or anything. My wife and I are like detectives or cops or superheroes or maybe just regular people that decided to do something. Anyway, we're trying to stop this device.
The device is like a little box, slightly larger than two fists together. It's black and rectangular or square. There's a little red light on it, or maybe it's shooting red lasers. The actual threat that it made wasn't consistent throughout the dream. It's shooting lasers, or emitting poisonous gas, or maybe some kind of sonic blast that kills or maims within a certain radius.
Anyway, the specifics of it seemed to drift around, as did the mood. Sometimes, it was exciting problem-solving, sometimes it was a feeling of futile struggle against impending doom. At one point, I remember kicking a bunch of people out of a toy store, cussing loudly and meanly, like the rebel cop from some late 70's movie.
Anyway, my wife and I had come up with a plan, and it involved outflanking this device. I went into the toy store and created a diversion or drew its fire, or something. Meanwhile, she, uh, bopped it or something from behind. Whatever she did, the thing got knocked to the ground and partly opened and was, at least temporarily, disabled.
The mood was reminiscent of whacking a cockroach, where you need to finish it up fairly soon, or it's going to run away again, and a half-dead roach is so much more awful than a lively one. Ew. I'm sorry I wrote that in such detail.
Anyway, I was bending over the thing, taking it apart, and looking at the electronics inside. I'm know a little about electricity, and I was trying to figure out how the thing worked, how it was wired up, how it had been built. I think I had in mind to figure out who had built it, even though there didn't seem to be a real risk of them creating another one. (Not sure why, it's just one of those dream things, where you have knowledge like this.)
The crux of the dream is my wife coming up behind me and making the very sensible point that it doesn't matter HOW the thing works, how it's constructed, what all the different components do together, how it came together - who cares? What matters is how can we disable it.
I felt a slight regret while I ripped off a bunch of blue capacitors and other components and threw them around. I knew that after tearing it apart, I would never really satisfy my curiosity about how it was built, but I also knew that was the safest thing to do, since there was no way it could possibly repair itself after I tore it up and spread it out like that. I didn't know how the capacitors were wired together, but I knew enough about electronics to know they were crucial to the device's destructive powers.
I also recall that there were a couple of EL-34 output tubes in it (which makes no real sense, since those wouldn't have fit in the box), and they were really, really old and dusty. There was some weird denouement about shipping lanes going north from Antarctica through the Pacific ocean, a bunch of weird shipping-container/barge things towed by a small boat, much like a train.
The whole point of the dream is "The details of how the destructive device are not nearly as important as what must be done to disable it."
This is especially true in interpersonal situations. I've had a few parallels recently at work, at home, with friends. I keep focusing on "How did we get here?" instead of "How do we get somewhere better?" Sometimes, a little knowledge of how it happened is helpful, but the details aren't worth obsessing over.