Saturday, October 11, 2008

The future...

The woman said that sometimes she has visions about the future. I don't think she was joking, but I don't know if I completely grasped what she meant. She did say that she experiences deja vu quite frequently.

However, she says that she has had no dreams about the trip to Indonesia. Neither have I. I've been strangely calm about the situation, and this fact is somewhat weirding me out.

We have all had those dreams where we are falling. But I don't think it is the falling that scares us so much as the not knowing when, or if, we will hit the ground.

To find some touchpoints in music, the song "Mad World" by Tears for Fears, later remade by Gary Jules for the Donnie Darko soundtrack, features the line, "The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had." Perhaps death is a known quantity, and therefore somewhat acceptable.

Similarly, a blues rock band from the early '90s called The Badlees had a song called "Fear of Falling," which featured the line, "I have no fear of falling, but I hate hittin' the ground."

I don't think processes frighten us as much as outcomes. We don't try things because we are unsure if we will like them. We may stay with the wrong person not because leaving is difficult, but because we fear how our world will then change. The known is far less frightening than the unknown. The fall is less frightening if we know if, when, or how we will hit the ground, or something else in the way.

In the case of our trip to Indonesia, though, I have thought very little about the process or the outcomes. Such thoughts seem to be avoiding both my conscious and unconscious thoughts, and those of the woman as well.

What does this portend for the future? Only time will tell.