Letting go of heaven
I used to be a much more avid dreamer than I am right now - and I dont mean "dream" in the sense of ambition, I mean actual dreams, the kind you have at night. But last night, after a day spend dealing with pneumonia and laying in bed most of the day, I had a very deep sleep and toward the end I had a particularly vivid dream. The details would only be of interest to me, but I thought the theme had universal value.
I was with Chelsey, and we were headed to her house to meet up with her family, to include her boyfriend. The setting was present-day, but the house was Heathers house (where she lived when I was dating her), and her boyfriend was a guy named Chuck, a guy I knew somewhat peripherally in high school.
Anyway, we went to her room so that she could change, and for whatever reason, I became somewhat lucid, and realized that the parts of my life had somehow gotten confused and mixed up. We were supposed to go out into the dining room and have dinner with her parents. Chuck’s parents would be out there too, and I really should’ve been leaving at that point. Everyone knew who I was and I knew I’d be regarded as a bit of an intrusion, but at the same time, I knew everyone would be polite and tolerate my presence if I decided to hang around. Chelsey seemed oblivious to these dynamics and just wanted to keep talking, although she was distracted by every damn thing around her, so no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tell her what was going through my mind.
But I kept trying. I wanted to communicate what the situation made me realize. I was in a familiar setting, with a familiar person, and both the setting and the person had positive vibes for me, although both had also brought me a great deal of pain in the past. What I had realized in that moment was that the parts were interchangeable.
Interchangeable!
It seemed to make sense. Although I never really put much stock in “dream revelations”, I still felt this was profound, even after I woke up. And this is what I had been trying to explain to my distracted ex while I slept. It had occurred to me that it didn’t matter who the girl was… it didn’t matter what the place was… it didn’t matter who the inconvenient current-boyfriend of my ex was. The faces and names can change.
What matters is the feeling you felt, at that time, in that place with that person. It’s the feeling I’ve grown attached to, not the machinery that made the feeling possible. It’s that feeling I miss, and it’s that feeling that I still dream about.
But a feeling doesn’t have a face or a name, so we (all of us) tend to associate the faces and the names - and the places - that generated that feeling with the feeling itself. That's why dreams involve a seemingly random mix of characters and places... it's because we aren't dreaming of those people or those places. We are dreaming of that feeling.
Songs like “Old Apartment” by Barenaked Ladies illustrate this point - going back to where so many good things in our life happened, feeling that by going back to that place, we can recapture those feelings - only to find an empty, fragmented hull where life used to be.
The generation of those feelings… that is what we hope to recapture. That is what we want. That’s what we dream of. And part of the fuel for that generation was the uncertainty and newness of the environment, the magic of having met someone new, the joy of learning about that person, the elation of sharing yourself with that person, and that continuing struggle toward mastery of that situation. It’s almost startlingly obvious to me now - the absurdity of believing we can “recapture” the feeling generated by that process via going *back* to a previously encountered situation.
I mean, it’s not happy news. Life would be much simpler if we could only keep rehashing the same situations over and over and always gain the same gratification each time. Modern computer games actually provide an excellent analogy - you start out trying to learn the controls and how all the buttons work, and you have very simple obstacles and challenges to overcome. Then you become familiar with the controls, and the challenges become a little tougher. At time, you may experience frustration at not being able to overcome a certain obstacle, but you eventually get it. Then things just get harder and harder, but you get better and better. Eventually your character either gets so powerful that you can basically breeze through even the toughest challenges, or you continue to struggle, but either way you eventually get to the end of the game. Some games have a definite ending, where you cannot play any longer, but other games have a climax, and once the climax is over, you are basically free to run around from that point on as master of the environment.
Could you imagine if life were like that? You become a master at it, and now you can just run around and do whatever you want and you don’t really have to worry much about anything because you already know you can overcome any obstacle? I guess that would be heaven.
But here’s the thing… I’ve never known anyone to play such a game and then spend any amount of time running around in this environment they’ve mastered. Usually, when one gets to that point, one generally stops playing, and begins playing a different game - one they have not yet mastered. So it’s apparent that the feeling is not generated by being a master of one’s environment, it’s generated by the process of mastering one’s environment.
That’s why Jordan quit basketball after his third championship. And that’s why he came back after just a couple years off. And that why he quit again after earning three more. Being on top wasn’t as gratifying as *getting to the top*.
So what’s the lesson here? What was I trying so hard to tell Chelsey, through all the distractions and distortions inherent in a dreamscape? If I could’ve finished telling her, I think it would been this…
Getting to heaven might be nice, but we wouldn’t be happy there for very long so just try to enjoy the journey as much as you can and don’t hold on to anything - or anyone - too tightly.
I was with Chelsey, and we were headed to her house to meet up with her family, to include her boyfriend. The setting was present-day, but the house was Heathers house (where she lived when I was dating her), and her boyfriend was a guy named Chuck, a guy I knew somewhat peripherally in high school.
Anyway, we went to her room so that she could change, and for whatever reason, I became somewhat lucid, and realized that the parts of my life had somehow gotten confused and mixed up. We were supposed to go out into the dining room and have dinner with her parents. Chuck’s parents would be out there too, and I really should’ve been leaving at that point. Everyone knew who I was and I knew I’d be regarded as a bit of an intrusion, but at the same time, I knew everyone would be polite and tolerate my presence if I decided to hang around. Chelsey seemed oblivious to these dynamics and just wanted to keep talking, although she was distracted by every damn thing around her, so no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tell her what was going through my mind.
But I kept trying. I wanted to communicate what the situation made me realize. I was in a familiar setting, with a familiar person, and both the setting and the person had positive vibes for me, although both had also brought me a great deal of pain in the past. What I had realized in that moment was that the parts were interchangeable.
Interchangeable!
It seemed to make sense. Although I never really put much stock in “dream revelations”, I still felt this was profound, even after I woke up. And this is what I had been trying to explain to my distracted ex while I slept. It had occurred to me that it didn’t matter who the girl was… it didn’t matter what the place was… it didn’t matter who the inconvenient current-boyfriend of my ex was. The faces and names can change.
What matters is the feeling you felt, at that time, in that place with that person. It’s the feeling I’ve grown attached to, not the machinery that made the feeling possible. It’s that feeling I miss, and it’s that feeling that I still dream about.
But a feeling doesn’t have a face or a name, so we (all of us) tend to associate the faces and the names - and the places - that generated that feeling with the feeling itself. That's why dreams involve a seemingly random mix of characters and places... it's because we aren't dreaming of those people or those places. We are dreaming of that feeling.
Songs like “Old Apartment” by Barenaked Ladies illustrate this point - going back to where so many good things in our life happened, feeling that by going back to that place, we can recapture those feelings - only to find an empty, fragmented hull where life used to be.
The generation of those feelings… that is what we hope to recapture. That is what we want. That’s what we dream of. And part of the fuel for that generation was the uncertainty and newness of the environment, the magic of having met someone new, the joy of learning about that person, the elation of sharing yourself with that person, and that continuing struggle toward mastery of that situation. It’s almost startlingly obvious to me now - the absurdity of believing we can “recapture” the feeling generated by that process via going *back* to a previously encountered situation.
I mean, it’s not happy news. Life would be much simpler if we could only keep rehashing the same situations over and over and always gain the same gratification each time. Modern computer games actually provide an excellent analogy - you start out trying to learn the controls and how all the buttons work, and you have very simple obstacles and challenges to overcome. Then you become familiar with the controls, and the challenges become a little tougher. At time, you may experience frustration at not being able to overcome a certain obstacle, but you eventually get it. Then things just get harder and harder, but you get better and better. Eventually your character either gets so powerful that you can basically breeze through even the toughest challenges, or you continue to struggle, but either way you eventually get to the end of the game. Some games have a definite ending, where you cannot play any longer, but other games have a climax, and once the climax is over, you are basically free to run around from that point on as master of the environment.
Could you imagine if life were like that? You become a master at it, and now you can just run around and do whatever you want and you don’t really have to worry much about anything because you already know you can overcome any obstacle? I guess that would be heaven.
But here’s the thing… I’ve never known anyone to play such a game and then spend any amount of time running around in this environment they’ve mastered. Usually, when one gets to that point, one generally stops playing, and begins playing a different game - one they have not yet mastered. So it’s apparent that the feeling is not generated by being a master of one’s environment, it’s generated by the process of mastering one’s environment.
That’s why Jordan quit basketball after his third championship. And that’s why he came back after just a couple years off. And that why he quit again after earning three more. Being on top wasn’t as gratifying as *getting to the top*.
So what’s the lesson here? What was I trying so hard to tell Chelsey, through all the distractions and distortions inherent in a dreamscape? If I could’ve finished telling her, I think it would been this…
Getting to heaven might be nice, but we wouldn’t be happy there for very long so just try to enjoy the journey as much as you can and don’t hold on to anything - or anyone - too tightly.