Longing for the Unconscious
It wasn’t the first job he had lost, but it was the first he didn’t even fight for. The work had never fulfilled him. It was narrow, silent, externally controlled. Each day a repetition, every thought too big for what was expected of him. He had tried to adapt. Thought his ideas more quietly, reduced his movements, dimmed his thinking. But anyone who reaches too far inward eventually hits a wall everywhere. So the end didn’t come suddenly, but like an echo of his indifference. When they let him go, he felt nothing. No shock, no anger, not even relief. Just that stale feeling that even the loss had become meaningless.
He existed in a strange state. Not loud, not dramatic. Just dull. Invisible like fog in a room no one wants to enter. Days slid by, one like the other, like grey clouds covering the sky. He didn’t get up in the mornings. At some point, he just stopped lying down. The sofa had long ceased to be a piece of furniture. It had become a kind of presence he collapsed into whenever his body demanded something he couldn’t name. Usually it was nothing. No hunger, no sleepiness, just a flattening of awareness that wouldn’t pass.
The hours drifted by in the pale light of the television, which ran nearly nonstop. News, series, documentaries about the universe or about the lives of people who somehow seemed meaningful. Everything passed him by. Sometimes he wondered if anyone even noticed he was still there. But even that thought had lost its sharpness. It was like the hum of a device you hear for so long that you no longer notice it.
He had once known a lot. He used to think, read, write. Now he clicked through media libraries in silence, never finishing anything. Everything was too much, and at the same time, nothing at all. When he looked at the clock, it was suddenly night again. When he woke up, it was already afternoon. In between: hardly a feeling. No pain, no anger, no joy. Just a dull form of existence.
At times, he wondered if he was going mad. But even that sounded too exciting. Madness implied motion. But he stood still. Inside and out. Hardly moved, barely thought, felt even less. And yet, something was there.
An image. A memory. A light that wouldn’t fade. The dream.
It had long passed, months ago. Yet it lingered. Not as a plot, not as a story, but as a state. As a sense of magnitude. Of something real. Of meaning. There, in that dream, everything had been different. The world had shone. It was strange, vast, alive. And he had been someone who mattered. Not grand, not heroic. But real. Awake. Present.
What had that been?
He had never seen anything like it. No sci-fi show, no game, no thought had ever conjured a world like that. The dream had been complete, soaked in atmosphere, so vivid that waking up felt like a loss. And yet he had almost forgotten it. Slowly, the image returned. Not out of nostalgia. But out of yearning.
He began to search. Not outwardly, he hadn’t left the house in days. He searched where there seemed nothing left to find: within himself. An old memory surfaced. Something he’d read years ago. Lucid dreaming. The ability to become aware within a dream. Back then, it had fascinated him, but never taken hold. Now, it was different.
He opened the window he had once used only out of boredom. Back then, when nothing better came to mind, when he drifted through trivial conversations or half-formed ideas. But this time was different.
This time, he had a true purpose. He typed slowly, almost hesitantly: “Is it possible to learn lucid dreaming?”
The response came promptly. Clear. Friendly. Knowledgeable. As expected. Yet something was different. He stayed. Asked questions. Read. Asked again. And eventually he understood: The way back to the world that wouldn’t let him go was possible. Not easy. Not certain. But possible.
For the first time in weeks, he felt something like direction. No euphoria. No hope that cried out. Just a fine crack in the numbness. A quiet pull, as if something had begun to call him back.
He started observing himself. Paused in the middle of the day and asked: Am I dreaming? Looked at his hands. Counted his fingers. Stared at his reflection, searching for something off. Not because he believed. But because it marked a path. A small tear in the fabric of habit.
He listened to softly whispered phrases meant to attune him: “I will become aware that I am dreaming…”
He lay there in the dark, eyes on the ceiling, repeating them. Not with conviction. Not with belief. Just with persistence. He didn’t know if it would work. But he knew that doing nothing was consuming him. And if he was going to dream, then he wanted to dream consciously.
Something in him knew: The path didn’t lead out the front door. It led through another.
A door within himself.
