Entangled
On my walk into work this morning I heard this beeping sound, like one you hear in a hospital room, the heart monitor or oxygen thing or whatever that beeps every few seconds, and I thought about how (crazy) unexpected it would be if I was actually in a dream this entire time, like some other reality was about to crossover with the one I’ve been in, or that my entire life until now, 41 years, was actually not real, imagined or virtual, or if it was real that I might somehow be coming together with an alternate path or something, or that maybe there was some glitch and this reality was getting mixed up with another, you know how some scientists say this is all a simulation, that the multiverses were becoming entangled.
I mean, I knew that wasn’t REALLY happening. I was just thinking about it. Seeing where that thought would take me. What would that look like? What would it feel like? What would happen next? What would happen to everyone else? Would it happen to them as well or just to me? Are we in it together? Are we each living in our own imagination, our entire reality created within our minds? If my world entangled with another, what would happen to the rest of the world? If my world entangled with yours, what would happen to us?
The thing about cool ideas like this, whether it’s just letting your mind wander or actually trying to think something complicated through and solve a problem or create something new or become better, is that they can take you some place novel, just by thinking, and they can really shape you if you let them. On the same note, they’re hard to see through until the end without getting distracted. I’m getting better at it, but I don’t think I’ve ever taken an idea as far as it can go. I think that’s what’s happening sometimes when I’m in that sweet sleep space where I’m having all these vivid experiences, like I’m dreaming but awake enough to know it, sometimes I’m not, but the details are so intense, like I’ve imagined a book and I’m reading every page and it’s coherent and compelling and it’s on some subject I know nothing about in real life when I’m awake and alive, like some historical account or mathematical equations or deep science stuff, physics or something I’ve never even knowingly thought about or some account, some super detailed account of an event that to my knowledge I’ve never experienced or imagined, and right as I’m really diving into it, I wake up, and I’m pissed because I wanted to stay there, asleep, or virtual, suspended in that reality within a reality, I wanted to learn more, ride the wave to the end, and find, or create some entirely new meaning.
And just the sound of a bell, some beeping led me down this path. And that’s the amazing part of life. That’s one of the countless reasons why it’s so beautiful. If you let it, even the most mundane things, a walk to work, can become exhilarating. We have the ability, the power, to create new worlds and new ideas, sometimes they matter, they can be used to bring about real change, to make the world better, even if it’s just my little world, but it’s transformative, and sometimes they don’t seem to matter as much, they’re just a little story or idea and seem to have very little significance in the moment. But it all adds up, and eventually becomes something more, we just don’t know when that will happen.
Maybe the when is during that sweet sleep space where everything is coming together and our minds are doing their thing, however it works, whatever minds do, and when it all comes together we have these moments of clarity, or I shouldn’t say WE, I don’t know what anyone else experiences, but I know that maybe I have this moment of clarity, this near collision with some bigger idea, and soon I’ll see it all. Soon I’ll be able to stay in that space, asleep or awake, virtual or real, whatever real is, where I can take the thought down the road, to the end, and see what it becomes, see who I become.
Maybe that doesn’t happen until we’re really old, or until we die, or just before we die, maybe it all comes together.
Maybe near death is a very intense sleep state, emulating what I tried to describe here, but just on a whole other level, taken to some exponential degree, where everything you’ve ever experienced, everything I’VE ever experienced comes together, reveals itself in some incredibly beautiful, mental, physical, emotional, intellectual, visual masterpiece. There will probably be sound too. At least for me there will be. I’m a musician. I make music out of everything. I turned that beeping into a beat, played some fills on my legs, rhythmically clicked my teeth together, hummed the melody of the new song I’m working on, recorded it in a voice memo so I can get back to it later, and even imagined myself playing live somewhere to a huge crowd, Barcelona would be nice.
For me, the beauty of life, one reason I’ve always been happy, is that to some degree I’ve always controlled the narrative. I told the story. The story wasn’t told to me. If I didn’t like the way things were going, I thought my way out of it. I think other people could do this, too, in their own way. We have so little control sometimes, and being creative allows you to have complete control. Creative doesn’t have to be making a song, or art, or writing a novel, or making an incredible meal, it might just be a thought that comes and goes.
I said I’ve rarely been able to take these ideas to the end, which is unfortunate, but also motivating, because I know it’ll be rad as hell once I do. This time was no different. I got distracted. I looked up and saw a sign in a window that said, “Save The Planet.”
Then my mind went in a completely different direction. Who wrote it? Obviously a little kid, which is so sweet, and hopeful, but also sad because who the hell knows what’s going to happen with the planet?
My best guess is that, like so many other things, when we absolutely NEED an answer, we’ll have one. Someone will step up. My understanding of history is that we aren’t always good at being proactive. We didn’t come up with vaccines before we needed them for example, I mean really really needed them. The atomic bomb wasn’t invented until we needed it. We had the knowledge to make it, but not the context. I understand the time to act on the environment, on climate, was 50 years ago, but until we’re gasping for air, it’s not happening in any significant way.
Once we’re choking, even though most would say it’ll be way too late, and maybe that’s true, I think some scientist or engineer or tech guy or girl will come up with a way to save us. Something that simultaneously sucks all the carbon out of the atmosphere and uses it as a coolant/desalinator/green energy/agricultural something/whatever the hell else happens because of global warming and that’ll be it. We’re good. Dial carbon emissions back a few hundred years and move forward with everyone ravenous for green energy and doing it the right way, not because it’s best for our health or for the USA or for the world, but because it makes people rich.
I got to work, walked in, unpacked my things, opened my computer, and got to it. And by got to it, I mean I checked my email quickly, and wrote this story.
If we’re going to save the planet, first we need to save ourselves, we have to save our self. We’re going to need the power of the human mind, and all that it’s capable of, which I’m pretty sure we have no idea how great it can be. So my goal, for today, is to find one way to encourage people- whether it’s the students I serve, or my colleagues, or someone reading this, to be themselves, to block out the noise, to look inside or whatever they have to do to connect or reconnect with who they are, and to take one idea as far as it can go. And then to try it again tomorrow.
