Frustration Dreams
Learning to Let Go
I don’t have a recurring dream. I have a recurring type of dream. [Of course you do, Bethany.]
I call them “Frustration Dreams” because they invariably end up with me endlessly trying to do/fix/remedy/solve/undo/accomplish and otherwise end an impasse. But I keep trying to no avail.
When I was younger, the dreams involved an opponent. Not a bully or oppressor but someone so stupid, so oppressive in their sheer idiotic audacity that I found myself repeatedly punching or clubbing them to no effect. They didn’t even bounce back like the clown in Uncle Buck. No, no matter how hard the blow, how many times I landed a right hook, they took it, smiling even. I smashed them square in the face, and they smiled and stayed there, in my way, with no way to get past them.
As I’ve grown older, my frustration dreams increasingly involve insolvable problems, like knots that never release, even as I turn my fingers into knots trying to untangle ‘em. Or I need to do a single task, and we’re not talking about the labors of Hercules here. I just want put together a document or machine, but it always falls apart, crumbles under the load, stays in disarray, or snaps at the fulcrum, even when I use adamantium.
The most frustrating are the dreams where I’m trying to say something. Again, not a Gilbert and Sullivan opera libretto, mind you. Just simply trying to communicate a needed message that Sideshow Bob in the worst throes of existential angst could pull off, but me? Nooooooooo way, José! I simply can’t get across what has to be said, like, “Wait! Don’t touch that!” or “Aauuugh! I can’t take it anymore!” or something simple like, “No!”
Well, after 59 years, I’ve gotten frustrated with frustration dreams. Telling myself, “Self, you ain’t gonna have a frustration dream!” before I go to bed does absolutely nothing to alter whether they happen. Tracking when they happen in my sleep cycle, what I eat before bed, and reading tea leaves and goat entrails offer no clues as to what triggers them.
A few months ago, though, a voice said to me (yes, I listen to the voices in my head; they’ve been sent there by my heart, so don’t call 911 just yet):
“Babsie, why don’t you just let them go?”
“What?” my voluble self retorted. “You mean, just let ‘em happen? What if I don’t wake up and get trapped in an eternal frustration, like the Hippie (John Astin) in the Night Gallery episode, “Hell’s Bells”?
“You’ll never know until you try,” whispered the voice.
“Just let it happen?” I asked.
“Uh-huh,” the voice nodded her head, “without getting antsy.”
“‘Antsy’?”
“In your pantsies.”
So, I tried her advice, saying to myself each night that, if I were trapped in another Morpheus-inspired frustration loop, I’d not try to solve it, punch it into oblivion, get past it, or unknot it.
‘Cuz here’s the thing: What do I need to do so badly that I have to solve the situation no matter the cost?
Since then, I’ve had my frustration dreams, with the same encroaching dread. I initially tried to blast away the roadblock, but instead of growing more frustrated as it failed to budge, I just kept going at it like it was the thing to do. Like it wasn’t something to “get beyond” but to live with. To let it be.
With each frustration dream I have these days, I don’t get a solution to the puzzle, a doorway through the wall I’ve run into, an untying of the Gordian knot. And it’s beginning not to bother me. In fact, it’s kinda fun just letting it play out. It’s weird, staying in the moment of insolubility, finally realizing that I don’t need to solve it.
When I think about it, it doesn’t need me to solve it for it and me to be who we are. Perhaps it’s something to become acquainted with. Instead of getting past it, I’m here to live it.
I’m learning from this effort to be present. Not sure what that lesson that is. I’m letting go of lessons … to let me be me, especially when I’m prone to fear of frustration.