Like many of you, I grew up during the Cold War. For my entire childhood, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were the bitterest enemies, and there was always a lurking fear that someone would press “the button” (wherever it was) and bring all life on Earth to an end. It didn’t make for a great atmosphere, although in retrospect it at least helped most politicians in our own country more-or-less get along with each other. Few things unite a people more than a common enemy.
We all have dreams at night, but we remember almost none of our dreams. It’s almost like there’s a separate “us” that gets to experience them and sort through whatever is on our minds. On rare occasions – – perhaps because you’ve been unexpectedly awakened in the middle of a dream – – you are allowed to crisply remember whatever it was that was going through your mind.
On the occasions when this happens, there is another subset of instances which I find interesting and quite relevant to this post: when your dream is about something really bad happening in your own life. Maybe a child is killed, or you become crippled, or your house burns to the ground – – whatever the case may be. What’s remarkable to me about this situation is that, immediately after waking, you have some of those dark, bleak emotions that would be appropriate to such a thing actually happening in your life, but as you slowly realize it was merely a dream, and in fact your life is pretty much where you left it the night before, you will feel a lift in spirits, merely because that imaginary awfulness has no basis in reality.
In short, your spirits become uplifted based on nothing more than something awful feeling factual but actually being fictional, and even though the entirety of this experience is merely bouncing around your own imagination, this painful fake-out is enough to install a sense of relief and gratitude, at least for a few hours.
I experienced such a thing over the weekend, not because of a dream, but because of a book. My son had purchased Nuclear War: A Scenario, and it was resting on the fireplace mantel. I was between home projects, so I decided to sit down and thumb through the book for a few minutes. Once a child of the cold war, always a child of the cold war, right? I couldn’t help myself.
The book was not graphically shocking. There were no horrific images, maps of destruction, or simulations of the indescribable horror of a nuclear war. The book was almost entirely text, but as I skimmed it, my pulse began to quicken, because it laid out chapter by chapter how a global nuclear war would unfold over the course of a few hours of some day that we all hope never happens.
Anyone who has ever truly considered the results of such a thing will certainly fail to provide adequate words. Incalculable loss, irreversible catastrophe, the apotheosis of human insanity – – these are all thin reeds upon which one can try to hang the senseless madness of even one bomb, let alone thousands. Every song, every poem, every painting. Every invention, every edifice, and every breakthrough. Countless billions of tiny steps forward measured over millions of years, all laid wasted based on nothing more than idiot politicians.
I came to the belief years ago that there’s no way we humans have been in possession of these things for eighty years and haven’t killed ourselves. It is beyond belief, literally, that with the exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the airheads and nimrods on this planet have kept 100% in check these weapons of mass destruction. In my novel, I hint very strongly, albeit obliquely, that something beyond us has protected humanity. I hope I’m right, and I hope they continue to be vigilant.
I didn’t read the book. I only skimmed it, but that was enough. Hours later, when I was driving home, I was deeply moved by what I saw in front of me. I didn’t see an ugly asphalt road. I saw something smooth and useful. I didn’t see other cars in my way. I saw other people going about their business, living their lives. And I didn’t look past the same mountains I had seen so many times and let my mind drift elsewhere. I saw something beautiful that I hope I would see every time the rest of my life, filled with color, life, and peace.
Merely skimming a book felt like a nightmare, and returning to the life we know was like waking up. Nothing has changed, but I surprised myself at how deeply grateful I discovered myself to be.
Would that I could hold onto that feeling more often than I do. Shame on me for not recognizing all the goodness in our lives, how precious it is, and how easily destroyed.
