City of Dreams
The nightmare of chasing the approval of others
Friends,
I recently saw the movie Dream Scenario, and I can't stop thinking about it. In it, the insecure and washed up biology professor Paul Matthews suddenly starts appearing in people's dreams around the world. He's mostly just....standing around, a sweater-wearing bald derp of a man, just shuffling through people's dream worlds.
But our dreams are powerful stuff, so when people start recognizing him around town, his empty classes fill up, and he finally gets the attention he's been craving. He tries to cash in. He goes on talk shows, courts an ad agency, sets up a book tour, etc. It's that common trope of fifteen minutes of fame, but when his dream-visits start to turn weird and dark and even violent, things start to unravel (Midsommar's Ari Aster produced this, so you know: it gets creepy).
What struck me most weren’t the dreams or the celebrity but how, even with all the attention, all Paul can talk about is how he's “going to write a book”—even though he’s never written a page. He tells any stranger or friend who’ll listen, clinging to the external validation those pages represent. Inflamed by a national news cycle, his fantasies spiral out of control and ultimately cost him the relationships with people who actually know and love him.
Truthfully, it's easy to act like Paul. He clings to his visions of the Important Professor and the accolades he hopes will follow. We may not be in academia or appearing on talk shows, but it’s easy to go on that same hunt for approval, to feel like we won’t belong until we say Something Important or make Beautiful Work or Get the Promotion or Buy the House or pursue any number of dreams society says we should pursue. But Paul—we—already have everything we need. Food on the table, roofs over our heads, loving relationships, etc. It’s very easy to chase after the approval of others at the expense of our own lives.
But this is where we need to diverge from the film (spoilers ahead). In the last moment, the film closes in on itself—Paul’s life is in shambles, he learns nothing, and he stays firmly in fantasy. As his relationship with his wife Janet ends in separation, Paul retreats back into his own dreams, imagining a tender moment they’ll never share again. And when Talking Heads starts to sing “We live in the city of dreams,” the film claims there is nothing else for us humans: an endless entanglement with unconscious drives and fantasies.
I have to disagree. Yes Paul’s life fell apart, and his dreams (and the dream-visits) turned to ash in his hands. But he didn’t have to stay there, and neither do we. Things falling apart can be a paradoxical gift, because when that happens to us, we have an opportunity to wake up, to let the flimsy personas break down so moonlight can leak in and illuminate the darkness. That’s why I’m drawn to the Buddhist wisdom I shared last week, and it’s worth sharing again. Here’s Pema Chodron on spirituality:
It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.
The path of true awakening. In Dream Scenario, Paul never finds it, but we can learn to see the fantasy worlds we build. It’s not easy—that’s why it’s a spiritual path and not a quick fix. We don’t have to live in a city of dreams, but it does take courage to step beyond its borders.
Take care,
Michael
Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house. Izumi Shikibu
Systems thinking is so fascinating to me—and Donella Meadows is the expert
Smash devotion and pug memes together, and you get this weird website
“Why Books Don’t Work” is a very good article on reading and metacognition
Researching “Gen Alpha Slang” is giving me a midlife crisis
Yes, yes, yes on all of this. I especially love the Pema Chodron quote you shared.