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Dear Lucky,
My imagination runs wild every day and I can’t control it.
I constantly think about everything that could go wrong.
For instance, I’m not good at public speaking. I know I will biff the speech if I’m ever called upon to give an important address at some function or other. I will melt so violently under the pressure that my earthly form will only remain as a puddle of tears and sweat.
Or what about my incompetence as a deep-sea diver? The day will surely come when I find myself 1,000 feet underwater and then what?
And what if I’m required with urgency to distinguish between a table fork, a salad fork, and a serving fork?
My eyes tell my mind that all is currently well, that they can see nothing to worry about, but my mind’s reply is always the same:
All the objects that ever enter into me when awake, have in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. I think therefore you are.
Evidently, my mind has been reading Cartesian philosophy independent of my optical organs.
Anyway, the reply invariably confuses my eyes so much that the only response available to them is to blink uncontrollably for no less than 10 seconds (but mercifully never more than 15).
How do I stop this chaos of mental fretting for even 5 minutes? I need time to clean my bathroom. My nose is telling my mind about it and being quite insistent.
Best regards,
Joanie
Dearest of all Joanies,
Firstly, you’re going to need these bathroom cleaning tips:
Vinegar and bicarbonate of soda are inexpensive friends when it comes to dissolving plughole dirt, grease, and scum. (Make sure to rinse them off after with hot water.)
Used discerningly, lemon juice can help remove strong odors. A dash in your post-cleaning glass of water will have similar refreshing effects on your spirit.
You can stop your mirror from steaming up for about two weeks by rubbing a drop—yes, just a drop!—of washing up liquid into the glass with kitchen paper.
If your showerhead ever gets all clogged and mucky, try this. Mix a solution of half distilled vinegar and half water in a plastic bag. Immerse the showerhead in the solution by fastening the bag over it with an elastic band. Remove the bag after an hour and rinse the showerhead with hot water. No more clog, no more muck.
Joanie, you’re going to need these tips because you’re going to have time to clean your bathroom after reading this letter.
I’ll start here: I once had a dream in which I felt myself physically disappearing.
When I rematerialized, I was a prominent extreme-height aerial acrobat in a renowned contemporary circus. This was a particularly cruel twist of fate, given my crippling fear of acrobatics and circuses.
Despite my phobia and complete lack of formal training, my dream self chose to remain committed and fulfill the required duties.
Waiting to go on stage to perform a flying trapeze-based interpretation of the history of cheese, I began to have doubts. You see, Joanie, I realized I was also afraid of cheese.
As my fellow performers masterfully represented cheddar, feta, and brie with pirouettes, half turns, and full-twisting doubles, I could hardly bear to watch.
Each dairy-inspired maneuver filled me with more trepidation.
What if my triple layout is sloppy? What if my attempt to portray Camembert shames the whole of France? What if I don’t wake up from this dream before I have to find out?
But luckily, I did wake up.
Just as my fear started to feel like wild panic and I was trying to calculate how to translate into body movements Camembert’s slightly lower butterfat content when compared with brie, I opened my eyes.
Dreams can be absurd, can’t they? But I’ve also felt like I’m dreaming this kind of dream when I’m not in fact asleep. How crazy is that?
My mind—and I don’t think I’m alone in this—takes my basic fears and extrapolates. Left unchallenged, it follows them through to illogical conclusions. Before I know it, my little fear is the cause of a vast array of weird and not-so-wonderful consequences.
One fear becomes a hundred fears—each with its own unique angle and dramatic, ominous soundtrack.
When my cheesy circus dream ended, an overwhelming gratitude washed over me. With the opening of my eyes came relief that none of it was real.
Such dreams are no different from how our imagination makes us feel while we’re awake. You might say that’s a false claim. Surely, the waking imagination is more real than a dream. But is it?
Rousing yourself from sleep and understanding that what was disturbing you was merely a dream seems no different to me than realizing that much of our anxieties are just as imaginary.
They’re illusions, Joanie, tricks of the mind! It’s up to us to challenge them!
You see, irrational fears and faulty judgments make us perceive threats where there are none, exaggerate the consequences of events, and underestimate our own abilities to cope with such things.
If we can use our imagination in a controlled way, however, we can actually tap into that feeling of relief that comes when we rouse from troubled slumber.
By taking time to consider specific, negative outcomes of realistic life scenarios, we arm ourselves with a sense of preparedness for what may come.
For example, if my dream self resolves to expose himself (mentally and then eventually physically) to gradually increasing doses of cheese and acrobatics, the world will be his fondue pot.
By rejecting exaggeration in favor of contemplation, we desensitize ourselves to the things that don’t go our way, which allows us to focus on our responses and have confidence in our own resilience.
By periodically visualizing the negative, we increase our gratitude for the positive. And by making a considered practice of it, we may be able to give ourselves the sense that certain worries have been dealt with and stop them from looming over us.
With this comes the acceptance that many of the things that trouble us are no different from what we see in our dreams, and the relief that they usually aren’t as bad as they seem.
The way to allay your worst fears is to take a little bit of action.
If you aren’t good at public speaking, start practicing it in front of the mirror.
If you’re uncomfortable in water, look into swimming lessons.
If you’re worried about table etiquette, well, don’t be. Any fork will do.
Action is the antidote to fear. In the long term, it enables us to overcome the fear. In the short term, it satisfies our minds, enables them to rest in the knowledge that we’re doing something that will build our resilience.
Action gives us permission to stop worrying, to stop imagining all the worst possible outcomes.
Your eyes can see what’s really going on. Not in the future, but in the present. When they tell you that all is currently well, please believe them. Reality is in front of you.
In fact, a gust of wind scattered my notes as I was writing this. For a second, I thought the universe was telling me to give up letter-writing. The reality was simply my failure to close my kitchen window in response to a stormy forecast.
And now, Joanie, go clean your bathroom. It won’t fix everything, but it’s hard to catastrophise while wielding a toilet brush.
Fare very well,
Lucky
