Dream slowly

Here’s a question that isn’t as important as the Internet seems to think it is: have you “leveraged” your “personal brand” using “key words” to “optimise” your CV and “fast track” your “dream career”? 

No? 

Neiths. 

There’s nothing wrong with a bit of ambition, of course. Nothing wrong with achieving things and being proud of them. Nothing wrong with a CV. Or words. All words, though, it could be argued, are key words. Except, I put it to you, the word “optimise”. 

Also, dreaming is lovely. Fantasising about, say, playing the oboe in the Royal Philharmonic - picturing yourself up there, lips pursed, back straight, mastering a difficult section of something composed by Handel centuries ago, as the concert hall lights reflect off the spectacles and bald heads of your rapt audience and you feel the music surge through you - is not a sensation that should be “fast tracked”. What gets you there is practice. And dreaming. Slowly.

So, then, this is a public service announcement. Dream slowly. Get some stuff wrong. Have a crack. Here’s a skill for your CV: time taker. Take your time.

Take your time to remember. Imagine a memory thief is coming to steal all your memories. Pick three to keep. Go! Now!

Take your time to do nothing. Ten minutes. Five, if you must. Lie down. No headphones. No trying desperately to be zen. No “clearing your mind and thinking of yourself in a forest telling yourself you’re at peace”. Just like there, breathing, mind doing whatever it likes. Marooned on a couch or a bed with nowhere to look but up.  

Take your time to notice the way you read signs inside your head. Like how “keep clear” when written on a road is always “CLEAR KEEP”. Or how the “if you can’t see my mirrors, I can’t see you” on the back of a large truck always reads itself in an arms-crossed, school teacher voice similar to “if you don’t want to listen, we can stay right through recess”. Or how the bus you’re driving behind says “Warning: bus stopping constantly” and you can’t help but think it’s a judgement. “Ugh. This bus is stopping constantly”. Signs: your brain makes them more than just words.

Take your time to wonder about the really important stuff. Like what emotions do animals feel? I have a friend who thinks sheep sometimes get embarrassed. Once you’ve thought that about sheep, it’s hard not to feel a genuine empathy for them.

Also, isn’t it interesting how when humans achieve something, it makes us seem both bold and humble? Like when you see marathon runners in the Olympics and you realise they’re pushing the bounds of human physical limitation and it’s incredible that someone can run that far and that fast, but also: woah, these people are vomiting and wobbling and excreting and look like they haven’t eaten since 1974. They’re both awe-inspiring and pitiful at the same time. And sometimes you walk past a building site and see the machinery digging holes and the workers squinting up at the crane thing lowering cement panels onto each other like oversized jigsaw pieces and you think “wow, how clever, humans used to have to do that with shovels” but also “Really? This is still all we’ve got? It’s clumsy and inexact and takes forever and it seems like aliens might laugh at us for it”. 

There is a strong chance, though, that aliens haven’t thought of tea bags or egg whisks or rollercoasters or how to sing in a round. 

Take your time to notice how animals and children often bring out the best in people in public. Getting down on one’s knees in front of a dog tied up outside a supermarket is in some people’s DNA. “Are you a good boy? Oh yes you are!” is a phrase that, when you say it with conviction, brings your own blood pressure down. Similarly, if you carry a toddler over your shoulder in the queue at the post office and then turn around quickly, chances are you will catch at least one grown adult bent double, silently mouthing “There you are!” behind peekaboo saloon door hands. The stereotype that it is always women doing this is incorrect, by the way. In my experience, queue-peekabooers hail from a range of backgrounds and are united in one thing only: deploying coming timing and, often, a range of amusing props, to entertain a person whose main facial expression is the bemused stare. 

Don’t fast track your dreams. Don’t optimise anything. Take your time. Marvel at an egg whisk. Console a sheep. This has been a public service announcement. 

An edited version of this column appeared in The Big Issue. Please support Big Issue vendors and the work of this excellent institution.