Living, Sleeping, or Dreaming?

We live in a generation where everything is faster than it ever was, and the world is made smaller, revolving at this Speed Of Life.  The expectations of a society that is so advanced – where responses should be nothing short of immediate – have robbed us of the chance to formulate more sensible (and sensitive) responses.  Even the word “advanced” sums up the curse of the blessing:  a state where we are perennially in front of where we actually are.

Cars and their drivers steam as they struggle with the inexplicable reality of having to queue up along congested roads, craning their necks as they try to see some relief ahead of them.  Customers fume at the pleasant elevator music slowly driving them mad while their call is on hold.  When I worked at a McDonald’s, I played a Game called “Get this punter’s burger and fries before he has a chance to come up with something insulting and/or sarcastic to say.”

I am that customer, and my favorite question in the world is “What’s the goddam holdup?”

Are we hopelessly addicted to Speed?  I often wish I had been alive in the days when people were allowed to take their time.  They took their time because, by God, they had a right to it.  Everyone either understood this, or just had no choice about it.  There was a time when two years of my life would have gone by just because I walked out my front door with the intention of joining a friend to a pilgrimage across the continent to see some Old Stones.

Two years.  In this day and age, I would have missed two seasons of How I Met Your Mother.  I would not see the Celtics win back-to-back NBA Championships.  The Book I want to write would have to wait.  The Film I want to do.  The Music I want to record.  The promotion, the car, the house, the wife, the kids...

Actually, I’ve already had thirty-six years, and of all the things I mentioned, I’ve only managed to watch How I Met Your Mother.  Everything else is waiting for me to make it happen – yes, even the Celtics, who seem to only win when I am watching their games.  I want so many things, and they are all waiting for me to have time for them.

The Super Secret Law of Time, Want, and Doing:  The less you want to do, the more time you have to do it.

I think about being the soul-searcher on a pilgrimage in the days when a pilgrimage actually meant something.  I think about how my daily calendar would have looked:  Today, walk à that way.  Tomorrow, walk some more.  One day, eventually, arrive. 

I can’t imagine that anyone would have bought two thousand pesos worth of Fraps and Lattes to get a free Starbucks Planner just to fill its pages with daily entries that said “Walk,” “Walk some more,” and “Shave.”

That must be what freedom feels like – to have a to-do list and know that I have nothing but time for it.  It must feel awesome to look at my “week-ahead” and think: “Okay, I can do that.”  In fact, Life would be great if there was no need for a planner.

I have a daily to-do list that always has anywhere between five and twenty items on it.  My day is a race against the Sun to knock items off that list with constant action chained together by a misplaced sense of duty.  I actually believe that the world will fall apart if those boxes are not checked by the end of the day.  Is my world that fragile?

Dinner with Mom is something I have to squeeze in after the six o’clock coffee-chat date with my casual acquaintance from college who just happened to suddenly call me because he was in the area.  The inconsiderate prick must think I just sit around waiting for random inconsequential people to walk into my life.  Let’s see, after that, I can go to the bank before ...it’s closed?!?  Nooooo...........

This bank business, along with the other items on the list that could not be possibly have been done in a 24-hour day, will carry over into the next day.  The Sun that brings this new day also brings with it a new set of random to-do’s:  A bunch of monkeys wanting to get on my back.  They must come in the night and sneak into my head so that they can introduce themselves in the morning.  I know some of them are brought in by people who are supposed to be friends.  A lot of them come in via email.

The time I might have spent enjoying the Director’s cut of The Lord of the Rings or writing some mind-blowing poetry is instead spent hitting the delete key a hundred and forty-two times – once for every email that I carefully read before I decide that it is neither interesting nor enriching to my life.  Half the time, I don’t even get to hit that delete key until after I’ve sent back to the sender some inane indication that I’ve read his useless thoughts.  The oppression from the evil master we call a correspondence continues!  Slavery!

“Haha!  Good one, Bob!  Hey, here’s a link that’s funnier, you should check it out!”

I am fighting, but I am losing the eternal battle against facebook, spam, and egroups.  I have seen people log on to yahoo inboxes that say “1024 unread messages” and I wonder how the hell they sleep at night?  What am I doing wrong?

Each day the monkeys climb out of my head, my phone, my inbox... they’re coming in through the window! (through Windows, literally).  They bring me presents – no, ORDERS – which I compulsively write down in neat rows headed by a new column of unchecked boxes.  When does it stop?

This Speed of Life is murderous.  With so many things wanting to happen all around me – and each thing happening faster than the last – it becomes very easy to forget to breathe.  And when I forget to breathe, I die.  Speed kills.  But whose foot is on the gas pedal anyway?

The Super Secret Law of the To-Do List and Its Author:  You wrote it down, you can erase it.

Whoa.  I can...what...?!?  Now that I think of it, I have often looked at some items on my list and wondered “What would happen if I did NOT pop this balloon?”  I have also “cheated” by checking off an item that I did not really do, but just “decided” was “not really necessary”.  Does this mean I can do this more often?  Like every day?

What if I sit here and imagine that my next text message would be from “www.SMS-MD.com” – a group of online doctors who give out incredibly free, unsolicited, and accurate medical diagnoses thru text messaging.  What if it read “Gd am! u hv cncr, n u hv 3 mos 2 liv. Tks!”

I would love for someone to tell me I had three months to live.  While it obviously means that I am going to die in three months, it also quite literally and figuratively means “I have three months TO LIVE!”  That would be a hell of a way to start my day – the good ol’ bit o’ bad-news-good-news.

Bad news: “You are going to die.”

Good news: “You can send the monkeys home, you can put the list down, and you can claim your voucher for unlimited freedom right now.  You can turn off the computer.  You can quit your job.  You can tell people what you really think.  You can do anything you want to do, and you can do it right now.  You don’t have to shower ever again.  That last part is optional, of course.”

Bad news: “You are going to make a new to-do list.”  Good news: “This new list will be filled with things you WANT TO do, as opposed to things you HAVE TO do.”

A Want List?  Let’s try this!  I want to drive a cab.  I want to sing and dance in public.  I want to teach basketball to homeless kids.  I want to invent a new sport.  I want to write a book.  (It may have to be a children’s book, given that three months isn’t a lot of time, and I don’t think I want to be typing away my last days on Earth). 

I want to talk to complete strangers.  I want to climb up the down escalator.  I want to run with scissors.  I want to get into a brawl.  I want to leap off Guadalupe bridge and swim in Pasig River.  I want to work on a loading dock.  I want to live on the street.  I want to have no money and no use for it.  I want to rob a bank – and an escape plan is irrelevant, because I am doing this on my last day.  It’s this, or skydive without a parachute.

As I write this, I imagine I would sit with my new list and stare blankly at the many rows of Want-To-Do’s headed by a new column of unchecked boxes.  Drive a cab, write a book, rob a bank, sing, dance, skydive without a parachute, think of more things I may want to do...

As it is, I will probably still be alive after three months.  But one thing will remain the same.  I am going to die.  I already know this, and yet I am not on the way to any of the items on my Want List.  I have not called a cab company, publisher, dance instructor, voice trainer, or illegal weapons dealer.  What is stopping me?

The Super Secret Law of Addiction to Listing, Scheduling, Doing:  LSD is addicting because it fills us with feelings of hope and elation; followed by a fleeting sense of order, control, and complete understanding; and finally topped off by a sense of achievement and joy.  LSD makes us feel alive!

My terminal disease is the consequence of a form of LSD addiction isolated to the first part, which I call “Listitis” and also “The Cancer of Random Desires.”  The reason I haven’t started on anything on my list is because I keep adding things to my list.

I am not Living.  I was Sleeping, but now I am just Dreaming – or, as the half-dead Zombies might call it, “Making Plans.”  Planning is so much fun – with all the hope and options and possibilities open to me – that I am quite likely to plan for a very long time.  Multiply “a long time” by an additional number of “planners” and the result is “forever till we never do it.”

The Super Secret Law of Dreams, Plans and LSD:  Dreams are important, but when the plan is to stay in dreamland, all you have is a drug-problem.

I know now that I can make time for anything if I wanted to, but I don’t have forever.  In fact, as long as I have Listitis, I will have nothing but a congress of monkeys lobbying for time on my back.  With each new thought the list is getting longer!  I succeeded in slowing down the frenetic Speed Of Life, but now that speed has been reduced to zero, and I am dead...

I am writing this list.  I can erase it.  I have to send off the clowns.  Erase...erase…erase…

...Until I can find the ONE THING that I can’t bring myself to erase.  The thing that I really want to do – not because it’s cute, not because it would be cool, not because other people have done it and I am curious, not because my big hungry ego requires it...

If I got another text message from the relentlessly helpful-but-negative doctors at “www.SMS-MD.com” – “Gd pm! U r going 2 b dead tom am. Tks!” – What would I do then?

I might think about writing a killer (pun?) farewell message for everyone to remember me by – or I may not – but one thing is for sure, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing about writing it.  Also, I would not write something awesome without wanting to see how people react to my awesomeness.

So my one thing is actually this: I would want to be around the people I feel most awesome with, so they can hold me and hear my awesome last breath.

What am I waiting for?  I have been walking for thirty-six years, and I have been waylaid by lists, tasks, distractions, and monkeys throwing feces at me.  What I want – what I really want – is so basic: to be around the people I love – because they make me happy and I want to make them happier.

My pilgrimage:  Find Love.  Share Love.  Be awesome.

Wanna come with me, or do you have other things to do..?