Homo Sapiens In Fuga

Ever have that dream where you feel like you're running through molasses?

This newsletter is about the inner conflict of a Gorilla struggling with Anxiety & Depression who desperately wants to walk The Path of the Every Day Santa. To paraphrase Dorothy, "Anxiety, Depression, and Joy! Oh my!" All will be discussed here.

This article includes:

1. An image that will not be explained until the end

2. If a Physicist Falls in the Forest…

3. Intermission: Context

4. To Be Fair, You Asked

5. Homo Sapiens In Fuga

6. My Bad Dream

7. Dream Analysis

8. The Takeaway

Homo Sapiens (Male?) In Fuga

If a Physicist Falls in the Forest…

Are you familiar with the physics quandary of the Immovable Object and the Unstoppable Force? It is a physicist’s version of a Zen Koan. What happens when something which is literally unstoppable impacts something which is literally immovable?

What happens when an Immovable Object is met by an Unstoppable Force?

I don’t know the answer, but I don’t think the results would be good. I would guess it is something along the lines of a singularity, perhaps the birth of a black hole, or the Big Bang 2.0. The Big Bang to end all Big Bangs? However, someone far smarter than me has explained it in such a way to take all the fun out of it. (This may be the only film I would ever suggest Micheal Bay remake.)

The reason I am teasing you with physics riddles is that I feel as if I am trapped in this one at the moment. My head is the Unstoppable Force and the wall, or telephone pole if you like, is the Immovable Object.

Intermission: Context

I have been teaching for over half my life and I am still at it. So, I think is safe to say I know what I am doing.

I do. I know I do, and all evidence points to this conclusion. However, my new semester begins for me on Monday and I am having a case of Sudden Onset Imposter Syndrome.

It is like writer’s block, but instead of an essay I am looking at Keynote slides and lesson plans.

So, while I stare at my materials from the same course one year prior, and consider over what needs to be updated, I find myself metaphorically banging my head against a telephone pole rather than getting to it.

We all know it’s not about the lesson plans.

To Be Fair, You Asked

While taking a break from the metaphorical head banging, I hopped on Substack and saw a chat notification.

Allegra Chapman

asked her followers:

How's your week been? Got something to celebrate? Need a pep talk? Remember this community is here to cheerlead you through it all! ❤️

Challenge accepted. When staring down a telephone pole with splinters in your forehead, any distraction will do, so I replied.

Challenging, TBH. Have you ever had those dreams where you are trying to run, but either the air is like molasses, or your body seems set to 'slow motion mode,' and while you can see the exit ahead, you know that whatever is chasing you is not held back by the same limitations you are struggling against? That is my week. Monday night is my safe exit, so I am looking at 36 hours of cinematic slow-motion running from my demons, currently starring the Procrastination Demon, who has lulled me off the path with a sudden desire to make a creative writing exercise out of my inability to stay on task.

It felt like an overshare, but at the same time it felt good. I was doing something, I felt engaged, and I was enjoying it. However, it was not helping me progress on my necessary tasks.

Four hours later, I have a failed experimental sketch with water color, a draft of this article, and a drawing created on my iPad of a terrified man preserved in amber while fleeing a predator.

Homo Sapiens In Fuga

“In fuga” is Latin for “in flight,” according to ChatGPT, which is why I chose it for the title. I have those ‘running through molasses’ dreams often. I understand them, but I do not welcome them. It is like having a room in your house you cannot avoid but never feel safe in. Occasionally you have to pass through there¹.

These dreams are the manifestations of my struggles with anxiety. They are telling me that running away from my demons does not work. It does not matter how hard I try, I cannot outrun them. Sadly, until I get my mental house in order², these dreams will likely persist. The good news is I am working on it.

My Bad Dream

In a manner, I had this dream last night, but I was not running. I was visiting a high school classroom with another teacher in the USA. We were there to share our experiences with education in Japan. We, perhaps a bit arrogantly, telling these students the importance of taking their studies seriously to cope with a more internationally competitive job market.

One student pushed back and asked, “How are we supposed to focus on learning in school when we don’t feel safe?”

We had failed to take into account the vast difference in “school life” atmosphere between the USA and Japan, and not being quick to catch on, I rather naively started sharing lame “safety tips,” such as ‘cross the street to avoid dangerous people,’ etc. Dream Me is often rather slow to pick up on social cues.

One student jumped up to tell me I had no idea what I was talking about, and he was right. While he was up and yelling at me, their female classroom teacher put her hands on his shoulders and calmed him down. This is when I noticed the gun in his waistband.

Once he sat down, another boy, who was tall and built like an athlete, pulled his shirt to expose scars, stitches, and bloody bandages. In tears, he cried out, “How am I supposed to escape this!?” He then shared how these were all scars earned while commuting to school. He was not in a gang. He was just another target on the street like the rest of the students.

I was out of my depth. How could I ask these kids to focus on their eduction when they very much needed to prioritize personal safety. These students were struggling on levels one and two of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, and here I was teasing them with ideas of Esteem and Self-actualization, which were clearly not on the menu for them.

Source: Wikipedia (Converted from SVG to PNG via svgtopng.com

As dreams do, it skipped to a new scene in the classroom where the boy with the gun was fighting the athlete. As teachers, we all jumped in to pull them apart. This is where we enter ‘molasses time,’ as I was on the floor struggling with the kid and his gun. He was trying to get a shot off, and I was trying to secure the weapon.

This was one moment in time, but it was like watching a high-speed video frame by frame. ‘Molasses time’ is agony, as you must live through your most difficult moments at a snail’s pace, forced to feel them for longer than seems necessary. However, I posit ‘Molasses time’ lasts just as long as is required to deliver the message.

Dream Analysis

First, a disclaimer and an explanation:

• Disclaimer: I am not a trained psychologist, shaman, guru, or tribal elder. I am just a guy a smidge past the half-century mark who has spent over three decades casually evaluating his own dreams.

• Explanation: Why does an analysis of my dream matter to you? It will share my process of looking at my dreams, which may help you to look at your own. Or not. It may just attract your morbid curiosity about what is to be found in the dusty places at the back of my mind.

Secondly, let me summarize my beliefs about dream evaluation, so you can understand my process. I cannot tell you whose theories on dream analysis I follow, as I do not recall where my ideas came from over thirty years ago, and dream analysis seems such a ‘soft science’ that I think it does not matter. I could be wrong.

My concepts of dreams is that they are internal movies played on the backs of our mind as a result of our ideas and memories from the day being organized by the little Mental Elves³ charged with keeping track of such things. When each snippet of information is pushed into a cubby with a related idea, a cloud of dust puffs out to lock the concepts together. It is the extra dust, which wafts about on the eddies and currents of air created by the Elves rushing about, that provide the characters, locations, story lines, and plot points of our dreams.

So, what did my dream mean?

1. ‘Molasses time’: The feeling that no matter how hard you try you are not capable of outrunning whatever it is that chases you in your dream. This is your mind telling you you cannot outrun your problems. In my case, I am avoiding some issues in my life rather than addressing them, and I know this is making my life more difficult. I could list these issues, as I know what they are, but you don’t need to know. The salient point is ‘molasses time’ is telling you to turn around and face your problems, as they will just keep chasing you.

2. The students’ prioritizing of Safety over Education: This is my concern about the state of mental health and safety for children in the USA. My granddaughter, who recently turned one, will grow up in the USA, and that frightens me. I am powerless to change the state of education in the USA, and powerless to make violence in general less prevalent there, and that feeling of powerlessness haunts me.

Those are my main takeaways from my dream. There is also a hint of my privilege showing, and my growing belief that the USA is becoming inherently unsafe, which are biases of which I am aware of to some degree.

Of course, if you see a message in my dream I failed to make note of, feel free to point it out. I am always interested in a second opinion.

The Takeaway

• Honest and genuine answers to polite questions can bear interesting fruit, which is something I discuss in this post: Thank You For Loving Me.

• Sometimes a distraction is what you need. I feel better now. Rather than feeling knotted up with anxiety, as I did earlier, I feel relaxed after channeling my attention on creative output. First, with some watercolor, then with sketching on the iPad, and finally writing this.

• Listen to your dreams. You may not always like what they are telling you, but it may be important. I am gifted with the ability to remember my dreams most mornings, and mostly they are odd mashups of the events of the previous day and past similar events. However, sometimes, like last night, they are delivering an important message.

Questions to consider, or for the comments if you dare

• What do you think would happen in the battle between the Immovable Object and the Unstoppable Force? (Do you know anyone either of this terms may apply to? If soow do you deal with them?)

• How do you break out of ‘writers block’ when it halts your progress?

• Do you recall your dreams? Do you analyze them? If so, in what manner?

1. The basement in my childhood home felt like this to me. Maybe it was something about the uncomfortable feeling of being underground, or just the smell of the moisture in the air, I don’t quite recall.

2. In a previous article, Gorilla, Take the Wheel, I wrote about the Internal Family Systems Model, developed by Dr. Richard C Schwartz.

3. The image of my mind including a physical Memory Room, like a corporate mail room, but entirely staffed by tiny Elves, wearing curly-toed shoes and green eyeshades, rushing about stuffing ideas and memories into cubbies of connected concepts.