Lately I have been thinking about the importance of dreams. One may not always understand how important
dreams and
fantasies, and
very vitally even the far-fetched ones, are in maintaining good
mental health.
At present, I may not be terribly good in writing an objective analysis
of what happens to some - at least me. Yet, however, I believe I can formulate a rather accurate story based on my personal experience and my own life and
shed a little light on my view of this rather peculiar cause of depression
that way.
Take a moment to visualize a typical, normal boy, aged 14. One from
a middle-class family non-extraordinaire. A boy that respects his parents
and really wants to do well in their world. One that learns and wants
to learn the values of his society, his peers and his parents. One with
a bit of imagination and another of ambition.
The fourteen-year old boy dreams: "In a perfect world, I'll get the job
I want, make as much money I'll ever need, get an apartment I like, live
in a place I dig, be surrounded by beautiful girls, hang out with people
I personally respect and on top of it all, own all kinds of equipment ever
imaginable and have lots and lots of fun. Parties, dancing, shagging.
Oh, oh, oh..."
The boy goes on to do just that. To try and fulfill his dreams - even the
wildest ones - and nothing else. He becomes driven by his ambition.
The boy becomes his ambition. He dreams: "Oh, those people
I adore - if I ever could do as well as they do, if I ever could taste a bit of life they
live. If I ever could be a a bit mysterious! Popular! All those things!
Someone that everybody loved!"
Time goes by.
Now imagine another boy, one aged twenty-two. One with a well-paying dream
job in a Wall Street company, one with his own non-rental apartment in a
beautiful, peaceful place. A guy that mostly dates models, or so he likes to
think, a guy that knows all the key people in his scene. One that doesn't
look particularly special, but one that brings together birthday parties
with lots of local celebrities, booze, drugs and a big big gourmet-menu.
The kind of guy who will buy anything if he thinks it'll make his life any better. One with just a little
bit too much money and a little bit too little imagination.
This brings us to what? This twenty-two year old boy is depressed. He is sad,
because he does not have any dreams to fulfill. He doesn't particularly want anything anymore. He
already has everything he dreamt of and a little bit extra. He became his ambition and now he is it. He can dream,
sure, but not of things he really couldn't reach. Not of things that would
take time to complete, of things that would be far beyond his reach.
He could not complain of a single thing. He has the best wide-screen TFTs,
highend-laptops, 300" projection-televisions and everything else he could
think of when he was a little kid. The models he dates are the cutest he's
ever seen. The house he lives in is near a beach. The house is equipped
with a hot-tub, a jacuzzi, an extra guest-room and what not.
"Jesus," he thinks, "what is missing from my life?"
Even his wife loves him, even more than he wants to believe. He attends yoga,
he drinks champagne, has a lovely wine cellar and believes in nirvana. Her
wife supports all those parts of him. Perfectly.
He helps charities, he boasts about arranging free summer-parties for poor
people. He wants to help everyone enjoy their life to the max. Should he meet
a sad person on the street, he'd take him to have a cup of coffee and talk,
try and see if he can cheer him up and help the poor fella have a more positive
outlook on life.
Where's the problem then? He doesn't realize how lacking his imagination is.
He probably should be more ambitious? He probably should want more material
things? He should do more yoga? Sure, if necessary, he could do that, he doesn't
particularly want any of that, though. He doesn't see the need. He already
has food, water and shelter. He has what he needs.
Let's see. He doesn't have a motorcycle, but that's no problem because his
wife hates them anyway. Sure, a bike would be cool, but in the end what the hell would
he do with it? Drive around and get fed up with it?
He hates vanity. He hates broken things. The only mission in life he finds is
to give away things he doesn't need and fix the ones that break. Mostly by
himself, though, because he doesn't have anything else to do (other than his job and the company he has, but sometimes it just seems like they aren't quite putting
him to any stress).
Sure, he could study. But after teaching quite the same classes by himself, he
figures he would just feel dumb. He didn't teach but some classes in the local
universities, yet just enough to make his name remembered and his own
presence as a student quite awkward.
He got everything too easy, he figures. If he had done it by the age he is
fourty-year old, this would be good, he presumes. That way, he would feel life
had been a challenge. Life, then, would have been enough to make him scream, pray for
help, to beg his life would not be such a misery.
In that case, when he'd finally turn 40, he could gasp of relief: "Finally! No more
pain! I have what I want! Now I can just enjoy it and live life to the max!"
But no, he gets everything too easy. He gets it by the age of 22. He has sixty
fucking years left to come up with things to do. There ain't no scuba-diving,
bungee or parachute jumping that he wouldn't yet have tried. Extreme sports
offer but a short relief, he's found.
Drugs? Sure, drugs, he tried them for a year or few. Switch to new ones, try
a bigger doze? No help. How about the recreational ones?
Life on acid, he figured, would be the key.
Work on acid, do sports on acid, have sex on acid. Live on acid.
After a short while? A few months? Naw, not much of a help. "Man, it's
basically just the same shit as being sober," he begins to think and quits.
Fun, sure, working on acid was fun, he thought. For a while. But once he realized
nobody in the office really even cared he was always high and/or stoned, "Where the hell
is fun in that? When there's nobody to fire you, what the fuck do you do? Fire
yourself?" he came to think and gave up on it.
"Gosh. Let's browse a few books on self-hypnosis and life-improvement," he thought and picked them up from his big, long book-shelf. One that he bought
in the midst of all his mania.
"...And now I am to realize I've done pure heartedly all those little things they suggested
and I'm still here? What the fuck? Should I call the author and ask for directions?" the boy shook his
head and put them all back to the shelf.
"I am not bitter," he thought.
"I just want to have dreams."
"A life of no dreams is a life of no meaning," he murmured.
"Where, oh, where did I put my Xanax anyway?" he sighed to himself and leaned
against his wife's blonde hair. His wife, who was already deep, deep asleep....