Then I wake up. I’m in a… a bar? a café? Hmm. Yeah, I seem to have fallen asleep curled up in the corner of this café. I’m thirsty. I go to the counter and order a drink.
“What do you want?” asks the woman at the counter.
I stare at her blankly for what seems like a long time. What do I..? …what do I want? This is a tough question. Even if I came up with an answer, how could I know that it was truly what I wanted? The human mind, I know, is good at answering the wrong question. Maybe whenever I think I’ve figured out the answer to “What do I want?” I’m actually answering “What feels good to think about right now?” Or something.
“Tea? Or coffee? We have a nice medium roast…”
Ah! Yes. What do I want to drink?
“Uhh, black tea, I guess?” Might help me stay alert.
I’m pretty sure that the question I’ve answered is more like “what feels like a good idea?” than “what do I want?” but that seems okay. This drink decision isn’t super important.
I see my friend walking by, and go over to say hi.
“Nima!”
“Oh, hey!”
“It’s super cool that you’re here in my dream with me,” I blurt out.
He gives me a weird look.
Wait, what? “In my dream”? But then I realize that whatever part of me said that is right. I just woke up a few minutes ago, but I’m still dreaming.
Then I wake up.
This time I’m in a bed—that makes a bit more sense. Okay, bed. Wait, whose bed? The bed feels familiar and yet it’s clearly in some sense not my bed. I hear Sam’s voice in an adjacent room… oh yeah, I slept over here last night.
She hears me getting up, and calls from the kitchen, “Do you want tea?”
I'm Malcolm Ocean.
I'm developing scalable solutions to fractal coordination challenges (between parts of people as well as between people) based on non-naive trust and intentionality. More about me.
