How to Experience Dreams of the Waking World

"Am I dreaming?" - It's a periodic question raised in A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming to help you differentiate from the waking and dreaming worlds. Yup, it's like the totem in Inception. And although we're all very familiar with that movie, even scientists are still very unfamiliar with why we sleep and, arguably, more importantly, why we dream.

Lucid dreaming is knowing you're dreaming when you're in it, not simply reflecting later on in the waking world, like most of us do. It is the very real ability to interact with the subconscious playground of your mind, so the field guide says. 

My mind was screaming serendipity when I found myself at the launch party for the guide book last night, only a five minute walk from my new apartment. Listening to the authors speak about how the book came to creation, I couldn't help but feel like this was why I moved to a giant city, to crash into opportunities and moments that would zig and zag my course every day.

Jared, one of the authors, made it a point to note the surrealism of the whole experience of launching the book. The three authors shared their lucid dreaming experiences over the years and dove into the project of writing the book. They started to use Kickstarter to crowd-fund their project and even accidentally met one of the founders of Kickstarter on a whim, and he later featured the project on the site, boosting their contributions. And then it was picked up by a publishing company and spread even further than those with the faith to hand over money to have it made. 

Surrealism was the hilarious period to Jared's comments on the process, but he made an excellent point to the concept of the book. The excitement and adventure of being able to dream anything we want when we fall asleep has real world consequences. It can make you more aware that the two worlds don't have to be that different, and dreaming in the waking world can be just as wild and amazing.

And so there I found myself, chatting with the authors in the Black Rabbit bar down the street. And right now I'm writing with a new kind of faith and understanding that this world could be just a dream. It's worth remembering, checking. "Am I dreaming?"

The challenge is to experience it, whether in the waking world or dreaming world. Louis CK seems to have his hand on the pulse of this idea. He hit a chord once before on Conan with the now viral video Everything is Amazing and No One is Happy. And he did it again most recently with his argument against the constant, ubiquity of cell phone attention, particularly for children. We're so buried in our phones and digital communication that we forget, or worse, never learn, how to be an empathetic, interested person in real-life communication. We forget that life can be sad sometimes, and we're not sure why. Louie makes this easier to digest than anyone I've ever seen or heard.

Jason Silva might have the right kind of response to follow it up. What Silva says about the existential bummer of our mortal love is so beautiful to me now, I had to write it all out here instead of rely on the video (which you're free to watch too):

"There is a sadness to the ecstasy. Beautiful things sometimes can make us a little sad and its because what they hint at is the exception a vision of something more, a vision of a hidden door, a rabbit-hole to fall through but a temporary one. That thing ultimately that is kind of the tragedy. That is why love simultaneously fills us with melancholy. That's why sometimes I feel nostalgic over something I haven't lost yet because I see its transience.

And so how does one respond to this? Do we love harder? Do we squeeze tighter? Or do we embrace the Buddhist creative of no attachment, do we pretend not to care that everything and everyone will know is going be taken away from us? I don't know if I can accept that. I think I'm more side with the Dylan Thomas quote that says, 'I will not go quietly into that good night but instead rage against the dying of the light.' I think that we defy entropy and impermanence with our films and our poems. I think we hold onto each other a little harder and say I will not let go. I do not accept the ephemeral nature of this moment. I'm going to extend it forever. Or at least I'm going to try."

What we need to do is feel it. Experience the sadness of being alone, without texting someone. Experience the happiness of sticking with a skill or habit, and reaping the benefits. Take the risk to make something surreal. 

Puzzles of Interest in Brooklyn

Brooklyn has kept me in the moment. You can't get off a rollercoaster and I'm on it, baby. There is no time to slow down or think too much when there is plenty of great things going on around me and decisions to be made, right away, not later.

Friends have come over to visit and I've started saying yes to any networking event, comedy show or friend's house I've been invited to or heard about. The plan is to do something. Brooklyn is just my launchpad. It may not be for everyone and it may not be right to depend on a point on the map, but it's in my present and it makes me happy. 

The troubling, liberating, mind-boggling truth is there is never enough time. Never will be. You might put your feet up on the couch or get assigned a deadline for work a year from now but there is no forever. There is only decisions. As sure as seconds ticking away. You can sleep on them or you can sleep with them. Either way, they're there, hiding in the shadows and right beside your eyes.

Teri bought me a book titled How To Be Interesting when she was went to Boston recently. And it doesn't hurt me to read, I don't know about you, and I want to be interesting, so why not see what Jessica Hagy has to say? Among the nuggets of knowledge her bold-tipped graphs and numbered lessons revealed was page 60 - Pick Something. She wrote, "Not sure what to do with your day? Your life? Your career? Frankly, it doesn't matter. Even the most intricately organized plans could crumble."

It hit me again. We make decisions on the faith alone that we know what we're doing. But it's a gamble always and knowing that makes it that much easier. Because it could be over at any second, why not try to do good, do fun, do interesting? Why not make a mark and feel alive? I'm not sure what I'm doing financially as I bounce around night to night for improv shows, frozen yogurt, or vegetables I'm sure will rot in my fridge because I don't know how to cook. My job is the best I've ever had and I'm not quite sure how it will become my career. I haven't had a date this year yet and somehow I'm both not worried and totally confused about that. It's not all that bad. Decisions are made everyday and like Tyler Durden said, "You decide your level of involvement."

Growing up riding a unicycle and hiding puzzle books in his textbooks, dropping out of law school two-thirds of the way through, stand-up comedian Demetri Martin finally found out he was the ultimate puzzle. Working out palindromes and one-liners might not be your call to action but it is the answer to his puzzle now. Why not try to figure out yours before wasting time on something without a result? 

How to Die Working

So many Japanese people are dropping dead from their jobs, the Japanese have a name for it: karoshi. Literally, karoshi breaks down to the characters for "exceed" + "work, labor" + "death". Overtime without pay has become the norm with some posting 80-hour (!) weeks, off the books to circumvent the the rules put in place to officially curb it. Competition has red-lined in the small country and the new workforce, in their late 20's, are dying from heart attacks and strokes. 

Halfway around the world, I'm sitting here dumbstruck. What's going on? We have something as amazing as the Internet existing in this world, and people are still dying just to find a job and people are dying on the job. Technology was supposed to be Our Savior, instead it has made it the new normal to work harder and longer, and normal has become anything but that. We need change and it's not just more jobs, it's more important jobs.

The Model T job is done. Retirement is long gone and benefits become the new gamble. Giving your life to a company is no longer enough because there is no stability in an ever-swirling world. The big question ends up becomes: What can we do?

My mind was racing over all of this, Japanese karoshi and American unemployment, in 7-11 yesterday. As I put together the materials for my coffee, I spied on the Optimum representative pitching his plan to the manager on duty. He was playing the Buddy card, as good salesmen think they should do, and explaining how Optimum could match Verizon on service and beat them on price. They shook hands without a deal, and the Optimum guy walked behind me as I was bringing my coffee to the counter. I was so distracted by how ugly and shallow the conversation was that I walked right out the door, coffee in hand, without paying! I noticed the moment I stepped out into the open and went back in to pay, befuddled and embarrassed.

While Daniel Pink would tell you to sell is human (in his new book, ahem, To Sell is Human), the new era of communication is showing us that sales can't be slimy anymore. The 7-11 manager doesn't care to be persuaded about Optimum, he can find the prices and service right online. Transparency has freed us from shady or slimy deals. And without the sincerity to truly believe in what you're selling, more and more jobs are becoming hollow shells of what the world needs. What we do need is passion, we need Life, not people playing roles about one service or another, dropping dead just to keep up with the Joneses.

We're racing to make ourselves act like technology. You cannot be as cheap and as quick as our Robot Future. (Seth Godin calls it The Race to the Bottom.) You don't want to be. You want to be irreplaceable, undeniable, alive. 

Yes, it's much worse for the Japanese dying in the streets than the gross transaction I witnessed at 7-11, but I think the bigger picture is important here. We need some new thinking about work. It is no longer a spot to fill to feed your family or your video game addiction, it is not a moving, working piece of the machine. Just like our technology, our world has become a cloud, flowing and ever-morphing. Work has to be something of true value, there is no more timeclock punch-card. As Jason Silva puts it, "Maybe we need to look at new narratives for how to live our lives in our search to become cosmic heroes." (Silva talks here.) There is no alternative, it's the new American Horror Story. When they take away the shit jobs with fast food robots and automated call centers, what do you do? Start moving people. Fix their troubles. Lift the world up.

We shouldn't be dying for our work, we should be coming alive with it. Find it for yourself and enjoy what Alan Watts called the "real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play."

Remember the Alamo

Motion City Soundtrack sang best into my high-school ears with their song "The Future Freaks Me Out".

There is a compelling train of thought that every second we crawl closer toward it, the future is in our decisions. The advice of any personal development coach would be to believe it and you can become it. Hell, the idea of visualizing the future is the reason we have all this amazing stuff around us. But there is a sliver of this belief that becomes a bit too controlling, too convenient and too freaky. There is no guarantee that any single human can predict the future. Not one psychic, not one dreamer.
 
It can be a bit hard to swallow. We conveniently forget that no matter our goals or whenever or not they're achieved, the future will arrive in its own style. British writer Stephen Fry challenged me with a video entitled What I Wish I'd Known When I Was 18 when he said, "The worst thing you can ever do in life is set yourself goals." The idea behind this is either you melt into failure for an untold number of reasons or you achieve goals without satisfaction or reflection, marching onto the next. 

 
The danger is looking to the future for an end. Even if you conquered the world, you would still need to keep it. And then conquer breakfast. 
 
I'm currently halfway through Tony Robbins' 30-Day Personal Power II CD set (whew, what a title!). Goal-setting has become a much more potential reality if only because it is transforming who I am daily. While I'm currently all about the Brooklyn apartment with a balcony, Honda cruiser motorcycle, and a debt-free blogging career, it is much more about the personal transformation I need to acquire these goals. How do I know I want all that in the future? I don't. And you don't know either. For all we can guess, we may not want the trophy at the end of the race, but we can always say we ran it. 
 
It's the kind of present thought that had me smiling and without regret after getting a knee planted on my neck during my last jiu-jitsu tournament. (After the tournament, I was smiling, not during the chokehold. I'm not that masochistic.) If anything, it sculpted my ambition, my body, and my identity even better to throw caution to the wind and fight. 
 
If the future can't be predicted and we're moving toward it, whether we like it or not, the most logical thing I think we can do is build today for tomorrow. Dreaming too wild can be like fishing with grenades. There is an acknowledgement that we are not in a place we want to be and often our deepest flaws are revealed as holding us back. Hurting yourself to be someone else is the most masochistic. There is some pleasure in there but mostly you're left with scars at square one.
 
Ira Glass, host of NPR's This American Life, exhibits this clearly in an old interview he did for CurrentTV when he defines taste as the barometer for creative people. Your taste is the reason you want to create something of your own and it is the reason you know your own stuff is not that good when you begin. It is nothing like the pros, the experts, the famous. The success comes with the goal and fulfillment of bridging that gap and realizing your taste is on the same level with your work. This, Glass said, is what he wished someone would have told him when he was starting in broadcasting.

The simple truth is the present is all we have. You can argue the past makes us better today, you can argue that humans are uniquely capable of striving to their futures. What remains is that two very successful storytellers and thinkers, Stephen Fry and Ira Glass, used the present to throwback lessons to their teenage years. Whether you have goals or not, young or old, we're here to do stuff and sometimes it hurts to know we don't know everything. In the end, Steven Johnson may have exhibited best with this idea: "The adjacent possible is a shadow future, a map of all the ways the present can re-invent itself".
 
The future is now. Make it happen, as best you can.

To Be or Not to Be is a Bad Question

It happens to me pretty regularly when I wake up bright and early on my day off from work. Without enough plans, I ask myself what to do and, quickly, the list flies off the handle. Twenty-four hours are never enough to cram this incredible amount of activities into all of them. Normally, I end up running thankless, forgettable errands, carving away a bit more at my jiu-jitsu game, and visiting my friends halfway down the state. It's still great although it seems there could be so much more to the day.

"What to do?" is not specific and not helpful. Asking the big question of what to do is easy to answer with plain old stuff to pass the time. You can keep yourself dusting the whole damn house to answer that busywork question. What I find more appealing and fulfilling is a practice I re-discovered trying to slug through Tony Robbins' Personal Power II CD series again: Ask Better Quality Questions.
 
Whether we notice it or not, our brains are exploding with questions from the time we jump out of bed. Trouble can always begin here. Ask yourself the wrong question and you'll get an answer. Ask your brain why your day sucks and it finds an answer. Ask your brain why you feel awesome and it finds an answer. The truth of the conclusion doesn't matter nearly as much as what state your mind and body are left to survive in.
 
Turning the gun on myself, I realized just asking about activities was not going to cut it. I decided to ask a better quality question for my day off: "What can I do today to pull my dreams closer to the present?" Now, the scope narrows its focus. My dream is to make a living off my ideas. Dusting is not going to do it. Writing? Possibly. Better question, better answer. 
 
Too often life feels like a failed experiment. We can remind ourselves that mistakes are to be made but sometimes it doesn't always feel so great. Whether we are measuring ourselves against celebrities without mortgages or desk-jobs, or we're unable to manage our time to sleep, exercise, and eat properly in the span of a day, why not take a moment to really appreciate what is a success in your life right now? Don't bullshit yourself, there is plenty to be happy about in this life, right now. I'm not talking your favorite television show or after-dinner dessert. I want to know what in your life lifts you up. Are you learning to cook? Are you getting better at your Zumba routine? Are you soaking up the Spring weather? Are you a kick-ass friend, or sibling, or significant other?
 
Often questions like this end in The Happiness Trap. Pardon the heresy. After doing my daily exercises with Tony Robbins, I've been devouring Daniel Gilbert's skeptical and inquisitive Stumbling on Happiness. The more pages I turn, the less certain I am that I know what happiness is in this life. And, you know what? It's cool. Side-step the question of happiness, it's too subjective. Tim Ferriss may have made it clear to me, albeit temporarily, a long time ago, when in The Four-Hour Work Week he said, "Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has become ambiguous through overuse."

The idea is perspective and you can have it, like Journey sang, any way you want it. Sharpen your questions and answer them with everything you have. Let the sparks fly!

Be Aware of the Fear

My name is Daniel Scharch and I'm afraid. Like everyone else, I'm afraid on a regular basis, whether I recognize it or not. It's an epidemic of our imaginations. We can and will make it worse than it really is.

To battle this idea we summon the sentiments of greater minds before us.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Gandhi said, "The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear." Yoda, of course, said, "Fear is the path to the Dark Side." And one of my favorites is from Dale Carnegie: "Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy."

OK, so we don't want our lives to be limited by fear, according to a President, an Indian icon of peace, a small, green hippie, and one bad-ass American author. Fair enough. But what can they say about the concept of fight or flight? Fear is hard-wired into our system, like other creatures, to determine danger and protect ourselves and others. We decide and react in an instant. You can see it in the home videos where people pop out, wearing masks and either get clocked by their victims or send them running, screaming, and jumping. 

What we fear, in any circumstance, is the unknown. We choose fight or flight in an instant because we've evolved to prepare for danger. Just because we're at the top of the food chain doesn't mean our senses don't have to be piqued for predators. Today we have cancer and high-fructose corn syrup and Trojan viruses. Yesterday we had to fight off wild beasts. The unknown was when we would get jacked by a monster and die. 

Today, the unknown seems to be still very rooted in death. We ask ourselves why we're here and where do we go when our time is up. We fear we'll regret our life decisions. We fear the kind of person we'd become if we stepped outside of the comfortable box. The unknown becomes a question of right and wrong. We wonder if we should take the risk to fight the beast or flee to safety. The problem remains that all progress relies on the people who dare to stare fear down and change the world. The rest of us remain afraid. 

We can stop this. Hijack the fight or flight response with some better initial reactions. We can't necessarily turn off our impulses but we can be more conscious of them. Let's morph fear of the unknown into embracing the known. Study it. Play with it. Maybe Google it first if it's a snake. Think Jim Carrey in The Yes Man, or the What Would Lance Armstrong Do bracelets. Ask yourself honestly how you'd handle this fear with a snap judgment. What is the worst that can happen? Usually it's not so bad. What's the best that can happen? We forget but the benefits are usually amazingly progressive and memorable. 

Why not ask out that hottie at the bakery? Because you might be rejected and embarrassed? And then what?
Why not try eating sushi you've never had before? Because you may not like it? And then what?
Why not invest in a small business? Because you might lose money? And then what?

Keep in mind that attacking most fears doesn't mean the end of the world, whatever the outcome. We get back on the horse and ride. Don't fear being wrong. Fear being frozen. 

Build a better reaction. Find your North Star. Prepare yourself for meeting fear with more than just fight or flight. Question it. In the end, the way you answer to fear is going to determine how you design your life.  You make the choices.

I'll end this newsletter with the sentiments of a journalist like no other. "I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed." - Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear