AWAKE -excerpt

1. Are we still dreaming?

Here’s a word you may not have come across, hypnopompia. It’s a place that is neither here nor there, it has no anchor in reality, it’s that fuzzy place between sleep and wakefulness, where the strands of your dreams are loosening, as the real world beckons. It’s a place where time follows different rules, the cogs of your brain are clogged up by mental detritus and mixed-up memories and you are not sure who is writing the script. It is where fantasy and certainty co-mingle, the former giving way to the latter as full consciousness returns.

It’s a word that, to me, describes a place where we currently live our lives. It is a place of the dullness of senses and thought, where we are discouraged from exercising either. It’s an environment of mediocrity and fear, dressed up as progressive behaviour, where tolerance and intolerance swap roles, depending on your point of view, and where identity and diversity are enforced rather than encouraged.

It is a world where we are urged to conform to an ‘acceptable’ identity but to never behave as an individual; where we are allowed to have honest opinions as long as they are ‘approved’ by the media; where we can voice our ‘disapproval’ anonymously without any comeback; where we can become excluded at the drop of a hat, simply through the drop of a tweet; where we can only have a voice if it doesn’t clash with louder more insistent voices. This is like wading through treacle when we should be swimming unfettered and free. If this is a new ‘progressive’ environment then we must start leafing through our dictionaries for ‘adjustments’ and see if maybe we have joined Alice in her search for the rabbit, but in a land that has lost any sense of wonder.

We haven’t suddenly arrived at this place, we have been coaxed into it unwittingly by our culture, or specifically by those who drive our culture, mostly from the worlds of the media, entertainment and academia. The journey has been a long one, but the work of early ‘pioneers’ behind the scenes is only now bearing fruit and one wonders where it is going to take us next.

Some may say that ‘it is what it is and ‘just go with the flow’, but is that wise, when, in our heart of hearts, something is jarring, our souls are in despair and our spirits are dulled (unless, of course, hypnopompia has you in its clutches). It is a place of little hope and offers nothing except uncertainty and confusion.

This is the world we have inherited. Doesn’t it make you feel sad? Do we fear for those who will inherit this environment? How will we answer future generations who may well ask us, what did you do to allow this to happen?

Are we content to live in this in-between world … or do we need to be woken up? This little book has not been written to react against all of this but rather to get us to re-engage with our brains, shake off the half-dreams and help us to chart a new journey into a world of possibilities and … if I dare say … hope.

Why do we get up in the morning? Do we just intend to keep our heads down, take pleasures where they are offered, then repeat every twenty-four hours … then finally die? Do we need to leave a legacy behind, a footprint in the sands of time that was uniquely ours? Or do we just carry on and hope for the best? Do we act like the Stoics of Ancient Greece, who would say let’s not fight over things that are outside our control, let’s just get on with it?

Can you imagine if we all lived like this? No one accomplishes anything, not a single legacy of a lived life. Life would grind to a halt and perhaps it will be then that the dolphins take over! There would be no notable achievements, either personal or corporate, we’d all be fiddling while our Rome burned. Thankfully this is not the case. Many of us have a built-in drive to venture forth and, even if our culture may disapprove of too much independent thought, we won’t let that stop us, even if it gets us in hot water.