In my dreams, I am occasionally transported to a very specific place – a tropical island lost somewhere in the middle of sun-washed blue-green seas.  Birdsong is abundant through the day, almost numbingly so. And a chorus of insects sing their dreams and lives throughout the night, so that I am never quite completely alone.  Warm showers pass over the island every afternoon, followed by the sun to dry everything as much as anything may dry in such a humid environment. There are no animals beyond the birdlife; no predators to be sure, and no flatulent ungulants either.  Fruit grows in abundance, and nut-trees also; and the seas teem with all manner of fish and crustaceous life-forms. The island itself is little more than a day’s walk in circumference, ringed entirely with beaches of sand like driven snow; and there is at its center a precipitous and dormant volcanic peak, its slopes cloaked in the lushest emerald greenery and streamlets of clear, cool water .  It is a modest kind of haven, as tropical islands go. My only daily requirements are deciding exactly how much sun I wish to take, and how much effort I wish to expend in feeding myself. Being stranded there alone, I am under no obligation to consider anyone else’s feelings in my speech or my actions. I must do nothing to please others, and indeed must do nothing at all if that best pleases me. In fact, there is very little I can do.  I can certainly do nothing to improve upon the situation of the island, to increase its bounty or prospects or ecology. I have not the materials necessary to document anything, and no sense of impending ‘rescue’ to cause me to desire to undertake such a task. My only task seems to be to sit quietly, silently even, and cultivate an empty mind. And there is no one to tell me that I am wasting my life, or theirs, through such an effort. Wasting my potential.  For in the world – in the human world – we may each of us have a great deal of potential to accomplish great things to advance the spirit and the soul of the human race. But every single individual member of that vast, clamouring, selfish human race has an entirely unique idea of what that advancement should look like. So that even if one does achieve…something…it is all too likely to satisfy no one, to receive no recognition beyond that of disappointed expectations, of a failure to properly serve.  No. Far better, then, to cultivate an empty mind. A quiet spirit. An easy, undemanding, unselfish, personal oblivion.

At least this so in my dreams. Some days.

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