Pure Imagination

I believe hope and inspiration to be more powerful forces than despair and doubt. I may be a skeptic by nature but I try to balance that with realistic optimism. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than bitterly disappointed. So doing my best to set my expectations at a realistic level is one way to survive uncertainty.  

However it is a continual challenge. I love to daydream. I get stuck in so many moments about the future and what I would like to see for my life, my children’s lives and the world around me. It can be really detrimental to my mood at times because I come out of it realizing how far from reality it all is. That’s not to say I don’t have an overall satisfaction with my life. I am very happy with the majority of my circumstances but there is always room for improvement. 

I was listening to Kanye West on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast this week. It started off as what sounded like a rant of nonsense. Rogan asked him about what he would do differently about the country if he were president. He never really answered the question but instead went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole in what would be the Yeezy version of Alice in Wonderland. But here is the thing about rabbit holes, you have to keep going to find the rabbit. You have to keep watching Alice in Wonderland for it to make any sense. The same was true with his conversation with Joe Rogan. I had to keep listening and the more I did the more I came to understand where he was coming from and ultimately I really liked a lot of things he had to say. I realized it was like he was talking from what was more like a single stream of consciousness rather than answering specific questions. 

I connected the dots and realized that his mind is like a lot of peoples. Myself included. I can’t turn my brain off from ideas most days. I’m constantly bombarded with thoughts about what could be and what should be. Whether in my life, my community, my work, my family, my social network or the greater world. I feel like I’m crazy at times. 

That’s what the narrative about Kanye in the past few years has been about. His mental health. We have a mental health problem in this country and it's getting worse. One of the problems is we don't really understand what mental health is. On the individual level we are ashamed of the stigma of being different. We have little to no resources for it. We see the streets becoming more and more crowded with the homeless due to it and we call attention to anyone's sanity when they do things a little differently. 

As a country I think we are crazy. Our elections have become a spectacle and the information we are given and we consume on a minute by minute basis is subject to validity. The more time we spend online and on social media platforms, the more segregated our realities become. To the point where we actually live in different virtual realities. 

The recent documentary The Social Dilemma highlights this. I think it's something that most of us are aware of but need to be acutely aware of. When we see someone who views the world so differently especially from a political standpoint we ask or sometimes scream, “how can you not see that X, Y and Z are happening today?”  The answer is because they don't see X, Y and Z. Their reality is their feed and they see A, B and C and someone else sees 1, 2 and 3. Even the term “feed” is derivative of the idea of our appetite and consumption of a virtual food. And we are being spoon fed a diet that is not good for us. 

It’s no question as to why we look around and ask what is going on in the world? Am I on crazy pills? The answer is kind of… yes. We all are. Did you take your daily dose of Instagram this morning? Hey it's lunchtime better check Twitter for 20 minutes to see what's happening. I know I should be eating dinner with my family but this thread on Facebook is blowing up right now. Did you see that YouTube video? Time for bed, I think I’ll just watch a few more TikToks really quick…

Remember all of these are free. Multi billion dollar companies that give you a product... for... free. But there is no such thing as a free lunch. I remember my macro-economics teacher in High School taught us the TINSTAFL theory and life has confirmed it. These companies of course make those billions on advertisements and algorithms designed to specifically target every individual. 

Did you know that they have thousands of data points on you? That means they know a thousand details about who you are. When someone asks you to describe yourself, what do you say? Most people stumble and pause for a second thinking about how to provide details about themselves to another person. No one ever spits off a thousand individual pieces of information. So that begs the question of how well do we really know ourselves? If I don't know me better than the machine I’m holding in my hand, how in the world am I supposed to develop a healthy mind? 

As the documentary expresses you are the product for sale. Your attention has value to these billion dollar companies and you’re giving it away for little to nothing in return. We have to start spending that attention on ourselves if we are going to get healthy. 

I’m not exempt from any of this. Listening to Kanye at first made me think “dude this guy is nuts” but before completely writing him off I thought I needed to listen and once I got to a certain point, realized where he was coming from. I don’t agree with everything he said. I was impressed with what he recognized about himself though. He said as a musician he has a “symphony of ideas”. I felt like the phrase made a lot of sense and resonated with my own experiences in my mind.

Here is a guy who is married into one of the most bizarre families, multiple Grammy winner, international sensation and was put into a mental institution and medicated. 

There is no mistaking that Kanye is an extremely talented individual. His style sucks but his music is great. I’m not sure I’d vote for him for President but listening to him talk about his vision for a better world inspired me to hope and to do more in my life. That is a lot more than can be said about our current president. 

The current political landscape is one where we seem to make decisions based on ideals and opinions rather than values and ethics. Do the options we have really represent the best of us? Or have we given up on the idea that leadership can be about the type of person you are. After all, that is the compass by which we end up making our decisions. What values do we hold dear? If we don’t know who we are as individuals how can we expect to have a collective identity as a country that is sane and virtuous? 

What further caused me to think about all of this was that I was listening to the podcast with a young man I’ve mentored for a number of years sometimes known as “Q”. He’s an autistic, 18 year old Chinese boy. Our conversations at times make no sense. However, the more I listen the more I realize what he is thinking and how he is expressing it. 

He and I are miles apart in our realities. His, is a  view through the cultural lens of growing up in Asia and waking up in the American foster care system one day. His experience is that of a teenage boy in the digital age. His brain operates on a wavelength or spectrum different from the vast majority of others. But he isn’t crazy. He’s really different. In fact he knows himself better than a lot of people. I dare not ask him to describe himself because he probably would tell me over a thousand data points for the next 20 minutes. He is however, becoming increasingly addicted to technology. Every single thing we talk about is somehow connected to the virtual world. The machine is slowly devouring him over time. My fear is that it will eventually eat up the tender heart he has. He is a sweet boy, who loves others and once told me that he was learning to be a gentleman so he needs to practice opening doors for women. If that mindset is crazy, then sign me up. 

It's people who think differently and who have ideas that are based in hope, courage, love and wonder that I think can change the world for good. Like the song “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka - “if you want to view paradise, simply look around and do it”. Those like Q and Ye might seem out of their mind to a lot of people. One can argue however, that is where they want to be. Out of their mind, in a world of pure imagination. We can’t point the finger at them and say it's not right; we live in a world inside our phone. 

However, I can’t discount the reality of people who are really suffering and struggling because of their minds. They don’t live outside of it, they are caged within it. Theirs is a reality that is dangerous, scary and hopeless. We are starting to see more and more accounts of these people bringing others into that reality. 

Dave Chapelle is one of the most profound modern day thinkers around. His most recent special Sticks and Stones is funny and poignant. He says “I can’t live in the new world you’re proposing” as he goes into a joke about his kids practicing drills for school shootings. These drills are reminiscent of previous generations who were taught to hide under their desks from bomb raids. 

Chapelle says, “why would you have kids rehearse for some shit they have no control over? All you’re doing is training these kids to worry”. I would add, that constant worry leads to paranoia and paranoia leads to the inability to discern what is real and what is not real. In a world where disinformation seems to be valued more than correct information how are we to expect anyone, especially children to navigate life with any sort of healthy mindset?

I'll leave these thoughts with two quotes from two people who are considered to be geniuses: Albert Einstein and Dr. Seuss. 

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy; am I or are others crazy”

&

“Being crazy isn’t enough”

You’d be surprised to find that the first one is actually Einstein and the second is Seuss. One struggled with the same questions and the other embraced it. So, for those out there that are struggling remember that one) you’re not alone and two) there is hope. And if you are crazy well, Dr. Seuss, Einstein, and Kanye are all pretty interesting company to be in.