Apocalypse the series

I dreamt the apocalypse was coming and no one would believe me.  I kept seeing it happening like a prophetic near-future overlay, fading from present to future and back; it felt completely imminent.

I dreamt I was working at a big pharma corporation and had a secret meeting with two of my co-workers - minions like me - and three children of the company's top executives.  We talked about money and privelege.  I began disgusted with the existence of the 1% but they debated gamely, all had integrity and came across not like Paris Hiltons but as educated, smart and simply fiscally lucky and I felt somewhat better at the end at least about these particular kids having been born into such economic advantage.

I told them the change was coming fast and it might not matter so much then anyway.  We talked in theory about whether it would be better to be in the city on the streets, in buildings or out in the country when it happened.  It was universally decided that inside of an office building there are not enough places to hide from killer robots, alien invaders, zombies, or homicidal humans.

The dream changed and now I was a very wealthy young woman.  I discovered a file suggesting that my mother had been part of a cloning project, and began to doubt the identity of my father.  I searched records, recruiting the help of a few trusted friends.  I confronted my mother, determined to understand and expose the conspiracy, but she denied everything and I felt doubly betrayed.

The grounds of my house were like a tropical paradise with faux built pools, waterfalls and gardens; everything was controlled down to the perfect climate and groomed vegetation.  You could walk barefoot anywhere and never step on a weed.  You could wear a bikini day and night and never be cold. If luxury had an actual lap, I was living in it.

I snuck out and watched some of the events unfold from the vantage point of the sunroof, a transparent better-than-glass barrier that roofed the entire property.

My mother was joined by a psychiatrist and at first it seemed this woman was going to be her ally and possibly inadvertantly mine; they talked about my cloning conspiracy theories and the psychiatrist did not just dismiss them out of hand.

Then a close friend of my mother's returned from a routine doctor's visit with amnesia and a fresh surgical scar over what would be her left ovaries.  My mother started to consider that I might be right.  The psychiatrist gave my mother something to calm her nerves.  My mother fell asleep, the friend disappeared, and I realized the head shrinker was just a plant to keep my mother quiet and controlled.

The company was breeding humans to a purpose, though the end game was still unclear to me.  I walked into a shoe store to order a pair of boots.  I had decided to permanently separate myself from my old life.  I talked with the shoemaker and decided that if the breeding led to a better race of humans that were more in line with my own philosophy it might not be so bad.

I woke instantly, heart racing, 540am, sat up, and my first clear thought was that I was wasting my life, I took a wrong turn, and now it was too late.

The art of happiness - dream remix

How do we derive meaning?

I woke up with this question, at the tail end of a dream series that could have doubled as a graduate seminar in philosophy or spiritual studies.

My dreams were not unusual - there was an anxiety dream about trying to find a bathroom in the middle of a cactus garden; there was a dream about being on a train tour with writers and politicians and making a plan to seduce the aloof, sensual female author in my sleeping car; I became friends with the woman who showed me a secret entrance to the hotel pool while I was scouting for an escape from our prisoner of war compound.

But all night, my dream experiences were analyzed through the lens of meaning.  I was hyper aware of when and why in each dream my engagement and happiness were high and when they were low.

How do we derive meaning?  My dreams said:

From our social network - by being part of friendships or partnerships or families
From our experience - participating in adventure or documenting and organize the events of our lives or immersion in art/writing/food/sex
From our contribution - doing meaningful career or hobby or volunteer work or raising families or creating art
The one I missed and thought of on waking - faith 

Death, divorce, loss of a job,  loss of faith are life events considered extraordinarily stressful.  What do they have in common?  From my dream perspective, it's all about identity, purpose and connection.  When we lose someone we love to death, divorce or some other breakup we lose the meaningfulness of having our relationship to them.  If we are disowned or excommunicated, we lose the identity and connection to community.  Lose a job, we lose our answer to What do you do? and a concrete daily task list.  If we become too sick to work or participate in activities we lose engagement and satisfaction.  Loss of faith sends us into a limbo where it is no longer clear how to view and organize the world into meaning; it may challenge the very notion that life has any purpose at all.

My own happiness, sense of purpose, engagement, satisfaction, depends on connections, identity, activities.  If I lose a job or a person or an ability, the other things in my life are supportive.  But if I lose many things at once, or one thing that is supremely important, it can be hard to keep waking up to the world.  It loses its color, satisfaction is replaced by despair and eventually engagement by universal disinterest.

How do we derive meaning?

When I am low, I can't answer this question.  I don't see a purpose to being.  My little human life is so short in comparison to the lifetime of the universe, my existence unlikely to matter or be recorded, and I am so often caught up in the minutiae of survival and the prison of my own ego that I don't put my energy into the things I'm really good at, that are truly satisfying, or that I believe matter.

Depression is both a medical and spiritual condition.  It is certainly physiological.  It can be rescued pharmaceutically.  It can be brought on by sensory overload, by overwhelming demands, by loss, by trauma, or illness.  But it is fundamentally about being able to participate in life in a way that is experienced as meaningful. 

Write something

My favourite authors write like angels; my writing seems more like Pan.  Coyote.  A mythical trickster shapeshifter.  Unreliable, neither on your side nor against you.

In the 565am dark I woke with this question: what is writing for me?

It's been years (maybe 20?) since I wrote on a regular basis.  I feel it beginning to dry up, like my fertility, something juicy and vital that I'm not using, so it's ebbing away.

Writing is a lens - distorting, magnifying, resolving.  Bringing focus to my experience.  I can shoot the landscape. Wide-angled, I get mountain ranges; close-ups, grains of sand, shards of veiny rock, one rust-eaten leaf.

It organizes my time, makes bullet points of lists, notes in meetings, tracks experiments
then unravels into daydreaming, fantasy, impossible physics and far-fetched desire.

Writing is a sickness, a lucid fever dream.  It wakes me dry-mouthed and hungover in the predawn and teases me with turns of phrases lovely or disturbing, smoke signals hanging bright in the gloom, threatening to disappear whether I move toward waking or retreat into sleep.

Writing is a decision, an act of will, to leave the roiling cobwebbed dark, turn on a light, and chase the vapor trail thoughts into words.