WARNING: I am not a neuroscientist, a psychiatrist, or a medical doctor. I'm a computer programmer. What you are about to read is based on my own inner journeys and observations and nothing more. Also, I am absolutely not advocating accepting a life that is out of your control. In fact, I believe the only way to escape the invisible walls that may confine you is to identify them first, and then regain as much control of your life as humanly possible.
My journey into the mind and dreams began in earnest soon after college. I was a typical angry young middle-class man, working hard to get ahead in life, to get rich, perhaps, or famous, or at least get a decent car since mine was falling apart at the time. I was driving on the freeway on the way to something I thought important (it wasn’t) while wrestling with the questions many of us have when we find ourselves perpetually dissatisfied with our lives, endlessly searching for the happiness or brass ring we desire whether it be in the form of money, love, adventure, or all of the above.
I had reached that peak state of annoyance with the universe in which I begin to frame my laments as loud queries directed at the unseen puppeteer that seemed to control and influence my life. "Why is happiness so hard to find," I shouted, safe in the knowledge that no one could see me doing this at 55 MPH on the freeway inside my car. Right before I went under an overpass the answer hit me like a thunderbolt. I am not here to be happy. Sure, it's a goal that all of us have the right to pursue to the fullest. But evolution or grand design or whatever you want to call the force that made me into the shape and form that I am did not care about my happiness.
I was put on this planet to do the only thing that nature and the universe care about — to safely transport my seed from one place to other in the hopes of meeting fertile ground to produce more frustrated, anxiety-ridden beings that would do the same. I was a high-IQ chauffeur for my balls.
You see, the enlightenment was so hard to find because it was easy to find. I just disliked the answer. A lot. Most of us live our lives believing we are the masters of our fate and that the driver in this vehicle that we call our body is the intellectual "I." Sure, we know that powerful, elite groups of the wealthy shape the larger part of our destinies in a myriad of ways, but as far as where we decide to go today (outside of work), what clothes to wear, etc., the countless choices we make every day, those are our domain.
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