Between Obligation and Inspiration

Time Enough?

I ask a psychologist neighbor unconnected to the university to recommend a therapist. I also make a list of names from the yellow pages phone book. Unable to resist my academic impulses, I go to the library and look up the names on my list to see which therapists have published scholarly articles. I am excited to come across several publications by Dr. Jay Milton. He writes about how paradoxical injunctions can be used to counteract a patient’s knotted contradictions. I’m impressed by his practical applications of communication theory and by a Batesonian kind of edginess to his writing. My decision is made.

“I’m here to make a new life for myself,” I tell Milton at our first session.

“Well, I’m glad you haven’t set the bar too high,” he chuckles. “A new life, that’s awfully abstract. What’s wrong with the life you’re living now?”

“That’s a long story,” I say, not knowing where or how to begin.

“We have another 45 minutes today. Is that enough time to get started?” he asks.

Burying my face in my hands, I think about how to tell my story. I don’t know how much to say. I’m not ready to spill my guts to a stranger regardless of his credentials. But we can’t just sit here for the rest of the hour. I have to break the awkward silence infecting the room.

When I finally look up, I am distracted by the sight of Milton’s intensely focused eyes staring at me. He’s a handsome old chap. I wonder if I’ll look that good in another 25 years when I reach his age—about 60, give or take a year or two, I’d guess. He has a few soft wrinkles beneath his eyes and some minor flabbiness sagging from his neck, but his soft face is long and lean, and a dimpled chin makes it look as if he’s perpetually smiling. A few white whiskers peek through an otherwise closely shaven face.

“I’m a social scientist teaching in a speech department,” I hesitate. “I’ve had some success publishing quantitative research and my work is being noticed.”

“Good for you,” Milton interrupts, giving me a breather.

“In terms of my productivity as a scholar, yeah, I guess that’s good. Publishing came relatively easy. At first, it was challenging, but now I’m bored. I don’t consider what I’m doing worthwhile. I’m losing interest; I just don’t care about it.”

“Are you saying you’re not interested in research any longer?”

“No, that’s not it at all. I think research can be thrilling. I want to continue doing research, but not the kind of research I was trained to do—hypothesis testing, experiments, surveys, that sort of thing. There’s nothing wrong with these methods per se, I just don’t believe they can be used to get to the vital questions of communication that revolve around sense-making and how people go on with their lives after they’ve suffered through traumatic events. I want to understand relationships—love, friendship, marriage, families—and I don’t believe you can achieve the kind of understanding I’m seeking with surveys and questionnaires.”

“People change all the time. Isn’t this just a sign you’re evolving as a scholar?” Milton asks.

“That’s a generous interpretation. I appreciate your empathy and, yes, I do think I’m evolving, but here’s the rub: I was hired to teach graduate students to be empiricists and mentor them through quantitative dissertations. I’m supposed to be an exemplary empiricist, a model for my students to emulate. Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching and I don’t mind being a model for the students, but if I were free to choose, this isn’t the kind of work I would model. As far as I’m concerned, my published work is trivial. Oh, it’s competent enough, but it doesn’t represent my values or core beliefs about how communication works and the ways in which ideally we should study it. Every time I stand in front of a class and extol the virtues of empiricism, I’m betraying myself.”

“Oh my,” Milton winces, acknowledging his understanding of the dilemma I’m expressing. He seems to be listening to me the way I listen to music, intensely concentrating on every nuance of meaning.

“I’m glad you appreciate the quandary I’m facing.”

“Tell me more. How have you been dealing with this situation?” Milton asks.

“Not very well, I’m afraid. That’s why I’m here seeking your counsel.”

“Therapy is a big step to take,” Milton cautions. “Can’t your friends and your partner help you?”

“No, they can’t,” I say definitively, resisting his attempt to talk me out of therapy. “My partner, Linda, tells me in no uncertain terms that she doesn’t want to hear about my academic angst and I can’t talk about my identity struggles with colleagues or my circle of academic friends either. My colleagues—they’re the ones I’m most worried about—except for my good friend, Herb. He appreciates my work ethic and commitment to research. But the others, there’s no way I would risk confiding in them. The department hired me as an empiricist and quantitative researcher and I’m the only one in the department who can teach statistics and research design. I can’t really trust they wouldn’t hold my change of heart against me. You probably think I’m paranoid.”

“It turns out that paranoid people quite often are right to be looking over their shoulders,” Milton smiles. “Other people are out to get them!”

Milton and I have a good laugh together over the “validity” of paranoia, then get back to work. I try to impress upon Milton that I feel as if I’m standing at the crossroads. I’m afraid the whole foundation of my life could crumble. I need help figuring out how to unknot the tangle of contradictions I am experiencing. I tell him that I feel imprisoned in the identity of an empiricist and yet reluctant to give up the status. How can I turn my back and walk away now? Wasn’t this what I had always wanted?

“For the first time in my life, my father is proud of me,” I declare. “It doesn’t matter that he has no idea what I really do. Well, maybe it does—a little,” I add, “but I know deep down I’ve earned his respect. I work long hours and I’m not satisfied with anything less than my best effort. This is a character trait I inherited from my father. It’s his legacy. But his respect is not enough to sustain me.”

Milton made a point of telling me that he wanted to hear more about the values my father had passed on to me. I was not ready to go there, however, so I shifted the topic back to a more comfortable zone, returning the conversation to my paradigm shift. I told him about my admiration for ethnographers like Goffman (1959), Henry (1973), and Geertz (1973). “They’re bending the categories,” I say. “They write like novelists, but they observe everyday cultural and family life ethnographically, making truth claims about the empirical world. They’re blurring the categories of social science and humanities.”

Milton responds by observing how my body language changed when I started talking about my enthusiasm for the new paradigm (Rabinow & Sullivan, 1979). “What did you call it, interpretive social science? Why your whole face lit up and I thought you were going to burst at the seams,” he kids.

“That’s just the point,” I confirm. “My trademark as a teacher is my passion and enthusiasm. But you can’t fake caring about something—at least I can’t. I just don’t see how I can continue promoting positivism to graduate students. I’m already acting in bad faith and it’s making me sick. I’m becoming a snake oil salesman.”

“So you want to teach and work authentically, but you feel it’s too risky. Is that right?” Milton asks.

“That’s right. I don’t want to feel like a fraud, but I have students who are counting on me,” I continue. “Two students came with me from Cleveland State to do Ph.D. work at Temple, and a third joined a year later. What would I tell them? ‘I’m sorry, I’ve changed my mind. Forget everything I taught you.’ And what about my social network of friends? Many of my good friends are empiricists. They’re the leading methodologists in the field. They see me as one of them. I would be betraying them if I openly rejected empiricism. Besides, I don’t know who my audience would be if I starting writing interpretive social science. I don’t know a single communication scholar who identifies with that term. So who could I count on to acknowledge and support my work? Where would I publish? The whole idea of bending my professional identity sounds ludicrous. Am I crazy to be thinking these thoughts?”

I pause to take in the words and meanings spilling out of my mouth. Was this really me talking? I feel as if the words were talking me. Hearing the echo of my own voice, I realize how fragile my attachments are on both sides of the divide, intellectually and interpersonally. Milton and I sit in silence for a couple of minutes. Time is running out on the session but all I can think to say is, “Can you help me?”

“The choice seems pretty clear,” Milton replies. “Carl Rogers (1961) used to tell his clients that eventually they would have to decide whether they want to be accepted for what others want them to be or rejected for who they really are.” Then, he pointed his index finger at the small clock sitting on the end table next to him, a gesture that denoted our time was up.

I grew to hate the way therapy sessions ended. No matter how much we accomplished, it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t fulfilled. I wanted more—more time, more talk, more analysis, greater understanding. Isn’t there something more that can be said, something that will make the session feel finished? I suppose the end of a therapy session is like the end of life. It can never feel finished. It’s always incomplete. At the end of each fifty minute hour, Milton’s methodic nod at the clock reminded me that he was in charge. Occasionally, I would try to sneak in another utterance, and a question or two, but it was no use. The session was over. These frustrating endings were designed, I guessed, to teach me that every moment was precious, some were wasted, and none could be done over. As the weeks passed, I became more aware of and haunted by the ticking clock. The sessions seemed to get shorter and go faster. There would never be enough time.

Yin and Yang

The couch episode showed me that Milton had something to teach me. Gradually I was becoming enchanted by the way therapy worked. Milton had perceptions about my perceptions and I, in turn, had perceptions about his perceptions. Therapy took place at the intersections of these jointly constructed meta-perceptions and, of course, the feelings that we attached to them and shared with each other. I was hooked on the process. For a relationship junkie, therapy produced the ultimate high. I was a participant observer in an interpersonal laboratory. Not everything was rosy, though. I had to bracket my alarm about how much money this was costing and my skepticism about the wisdom of the peculiar rules under which we operated. Milton insisted upon these rules: We would never be friends or have contact with each other outside this room (unless we met accidentally or a dire emergency occurred) and we would never exceed the fifty-minute hour. At one point, I asked him if we could record our sessions and write and share our reflections on the recordings. “Each of us should keep our own therapy diary,” I proposed one day. “Occasionally we could exchange them and compare notes and interpretations about what’s going on. This could be a fascinating project.” But Milton flatly rejected my idea. “This is not an academic exercise,” he said. “I’m sorry but there are certain rules we cannot violate.” Although therapy was supposed to make you healthier outside, in the real world, the therapy sessions were restricted to the self-contained bubble of the room in which we met and the relationship that took place exclusively in this setting.

Over the next few months, Milton helped me unfreeze some of my views of things. I began to understand that my professional life was deeply entangled with my personal life. In both realms, I had split and divided parts of myself. My first wife, Brenda, had been quiet, serious, and detached. My second wife, Linda, was outgoing, playful, and immersed in the pursuit of pleasure. Ying and yang! Empiricism appealed to my urge for prediction and control, certainty, stability, simplicity, facticity, and objectivity. The new interpretive paradigm, on the other hand, appealed to my longing for understanding, creating meaning and value, and acknowledging the importance of complexity, contingency, multiplicity, and subjectivity. Ying and yang—again!

“You must find a way to bring the two sides of yourself into harmony,” Milton advised as our session drew to a close that day and he gave his familiar nod at the clock. “Our time is up.” In therapy as in life, the clock never stopped ticking.

The Dream

“I had a disturbing dream last night,” I begin the next visit, allowing my body to sink into the flowing fold of the couch.

“Tell me about it,” Milton replies, bobbing his head and leaning forward.

“I was walking alone along an undulating hiking trail covered with fractured chunks of moss-coated slate and nestled in a thick dense forest of mountain maple, yellow birch, and fir trees. My face was flushed from exertion. I looked like a long-distance runner trying to muster the strength to make it to the finish line. A low-hanging fog was moving in, making the trail hard to see. I kept looking around as if I were disoriented. “Why can’t I find a tree with a painted blue blaze?” I whispered to myself. I stopped to study the small map I was carrying, but it was no use; I was hopelessly lost. “How am I going to find my way back to the trailhead where my car is parked before it gets dark?” I mumbled. I had some water and a tiny flashlight, but no other supplies. The howling wind made me shiver and I realized the light jacket I was wearing would not be warm enough if I had to stay in the forest overnight. I kept telling myself not to panic, but I was afraid night would set in before I could find my way out. Negative thoughts and fears shuffled through my mind. What if I don’t find my way out in time? Nobody knows I’m here. I could freeze to death.

Turning a corner on the trail, I came to a place where the road forked. I didn’t know which way to go, though I vaguely recalled coming upon a similar fork in the road on my trip up the trail earlier in the day. Was this the same place? It looked familiar, but I couldn’t be certain this was the same spot. No matter, I couldn’t remember whether I had turned left or right on my trek up the mountain. I was facing a critical choice: One way would lead me safely out of the forest, but which one? Right or left, which trail should I take? I felt as if my life depended on making the right choice. Frozen by indecision, I couldn’t move.

Looking up toward the heavens, I prayed for divine guidance to free me from my vacillation. Suddenly a face appeared in the misty sky above me. Through an opening in the trees, I recognized the image in the darkening clouds as the face of Ray Tucker, who had been my mentor and directed my Ph.D. dissertation.

“Go to the right,” Tucker instructed.

“How do you know that’s the way back to the trailhead?” I asked.

“Trust me,” he replied. “I have your best interests at heart.”

“I do trust you, Dr. Tucker, but my life may be at stake. You always insisted we should base important decisions on data and evidence.”

“That’s right, Art. Follow the empiricist’s credo: gather sense-data; trust your observations; preserve objectivity.”

“I don’t have time to quibble over methodological details,” I said. “If I don’t make a decision soon, it will be too late.”

“Calm down, Art. You only need a moment or two,” Tucker replied. “Take a few steps down the trail to the right. You’ll see that the trail is worn and bare from many people walking on it. Then retrace your steps and walk a short way in the other direction. There you’ll find high grass and weeds growing over an unmaintained trail. That’s your clue. In one direction, thousands of boots have marched down the trail. In the other direction, there are no footprints to follow. Only a few hikers have ever gone in that direction and it’s likely they lost their way. You don’t want to follow the less traveled road, do you? There’s no telling where that path will lead.”

I followed Tucker’s instructions and within a few minutes had my answer. The two trails fit his description exactly. “Thanks, Dr. Tucker, you’re a savior,” I bellowed into the air as I started running swiftly down the trail to the right. Before I could go more than a few dozen feet, however, I heard a second voice, which I only faintly recognized. I looked up and was shocked to see Dr. Levine’s face.”

“Levine?” Milton puzzles.

“Don’t you remember? He was my undergraduate philosophy prof. I took that great course on existentialism from him.”

“Right, right, now I recall. He’s the one that showed the Bergman (1957) film, The Seventh Seal, about death, faith, and meaninglessness to your class.”

“That’s right. He had a great influence on me,” I say, opening my eyes. I am surprised to discover myself in a reclining position on the couch. My eyes must have been shut the whole time I was telling the story of my dream.

“Don’t stop, Art. I want to hear the rest of your dream,” Milton urges.

“Well, here’s where things get really hairy,” I foreshadow.

“Go on, go on, Art,” Milton encourages from the edge of his seat. “What did Levine say?”

I lean back and close my eyes again, attempting to put myself back in the space of the dream. Tonight for the first time, I’m one with the couch.

I continue: “‘I’m disappointed in you, Art.’ That’s what Levine said, and the echo of his voice reverberated through the gap in the surrounding mountains.”

“Why are you disappointed in me? What did I do wrong?” I cried out, as if I were a little boy submitting to a scolding by his mommy. “Have I made the wrong choice? Am I headed down the wrong path?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you that, Art.”

“You mean you won’t help me?” I pleaded.

“Only you can decide which trail to take,” he said, his voice trailing off. The image of his face started fading away.

“Wait, please don’t leave,” I begged. “I’m lost and I may die if I choose the wrong road.”

“Why are you so afraid of dying? Everybody dies. Remember what I said in class, it’s not whether you exist, it’s how you exist that matters.”

“I know, I know everybody dies,” I stammer. “But I don’t want to die feeling lost. My death would be meaningless.”

“You aren’t lost, Art. You only think you’re lost. Besides, a meaningless death usually is the product of a meaningless life.”

“But if I die tonight, I will have been deprived of an opportunity to live a meaningful life.”

“Every moment is precious. You are confusing a meaningful life with a long life. Short lives can be meaningful and long lives meaningless. We talked a lot in the existentialism course about what gives life meaning. Don’t you remember?”

“You mean about choice and freedom?”

“Yes. What did you learn about choice?”

“You taught us that a person is defined by the choices he makes. We express our freedom through our choices. Our actions give our lives meaning.”

“That’s right. So it’s your responsibility to make this decision. Nobody can make this choice for you.”

“You mean I shouldn’t have taken Tucker’s counsel?”

“That’s not for me to say.”

“I’m so worried about making the wrong decision.”

“What makes you so sure there is one right decision?”

“The trails go off in different directions. They won’t end at the same place. One will lead me away from my destination.”

“Just listen to yourself, Art. You keep worrying about what will happen in the end. Perhaps that is the source of your suffering. You’re ignoring what’s happening right now. You’re missing the trees for the forest.” Levine burst out laughing at his own joke. In my present state, I didn’t find his humor all that funny. Then he started coughing uncontrollably. I flashed back to the sound of the dry, hacking cough that used to interrupt his lectures. I guess he never quit smoking that pipe of his—strange that a philosopher would take such poor care of himself.

“If you mean, I’m not dealing with this problem, you’re right,” I replied as soon as Levine regained his composure. Talking to Levine was slowing me down and giving me pause to reconsider my decision. “To be frank, Dr. Levine, you’re confusing me. You say there may not be one right decision to make and I may only think I’m lost. How can that be true? Don’t you see how scared I am? My anxiety is at a fever pitch.”

“I shouldn’t need to remind you that anxiety has a purpose. It tells you that something is at stake. This may be the most meaningful moment of your life. You don’t realize how lucky you are to have to face this predicament. It’s a gift. I doubt if you’ve ever been as fully aware of your existence as you are right now.”

“So you admit, then, that my predicament is real. I am going to die if I make the wrong decision.”

“I can’t say. How would I know?” Levine asked.

“I assumed you came to help me, like you did once before. In class, you used to make my head spin. You never gave us answers, but your questions helped us recognize the source of our confusion.”

“Ok, then, here’s a question to ponder: What makes you think the two roads are so terribly different?”

“One is well-traveled, the other is not. I’ve seen that with my own eyes.”

“How perfect is that knowledge?”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean by perfect knowledge?”

“That’s the point isn’t it, Art?”

“You mean that our knowledge can never be perfect?”

“The knowledge you speak of is human knowledge—in your case, a product of what you saw with your eyes in your specific circumstance.”

“But it is clearly evident that the two trails differ in precisely the way Dr. Tucker predicted.”

“You are confusing evidence with truth. What is evident may not be true.”

“But I saw it with my own eyes. That’s a fact.”

“Yes, a fact, indeed. But what does that fact mean? You are in a forest, Art. A forest is steeped in mystery and the secrets of the forest are not made available to us through facts. What appears as factual to you may only be a product of your own imaginative reconstruction given your predicament.”

“But I know what I saw.”

“Why are you fighting me, Art? Don’t you understand that your experience of each road has been limited by what your eyes could see and you could understand. You’ve traveled only a short distance in each direction. How can you tell what’s around the next corner? Are the two roads really so different? Along each road, you can find living things and decaying things, signs of life and signs of death, new life cropping up and past life decomposing. The two roads are alike and they are different. Each road has its own special charm and promise complete with risks and rewards.”

“You make my predicament sound astonishing. You want me to stand here in awe of the secrets of life and death revealed in the forest. As a philosopher you can afford to indulge in such wonderment, but my dilemma is practical. I can’t take both roads. I must choose and the strain of that choice feels unbearable.”

“Do you really think that you can know in advance the consequences of the choice you make? Life doesn’t admit absolute certainty. Life involves contingency, chance, and fate.”

“I just don’t want to regret later on that I didn’t choose the other path.” I moaned, expressing my fear and dred.

“You can’t be released from the mystery of the unknown, the path you could have taken but didn’t. There is no do-over. The rest of your life will be set in motion by the choice you make. You won’t have a chance to come back and do it over again.”

“So if both paths are riddled with uncertainty, how can I make a rational choice?”

“I’ve given you all the guidance you need, Art. It’s time for me to leave now. The choice in front of you is about what you take yourself to be.” Suddenly, Levine’s face faded from view. Left behind was the surrounding sound of Levine’s voice, his final words echoing repeatedly across the forest, ‘The choice in front of you is about what you take yourself to be.’”

What Do I Take Myself to Be?

“I woke up trembling and bewildered. A few seconds later, though, I realized I had been dreaming. Whew, I’m awake. I’m alive. The dream had seemed so real. I sighed, exhaling a deep groan of relief. But my reprieve was temporary. As the day wore on, I kept asking myself what Levine meant when he implied the incident could have been an illusion, you know, not real, and that my choice was about what I took myself to be. I mean, only a fool would go down the unkempt path that showed no sign of life. Wouldn’t that mean sure death? I would be taking myself to be a dead man.”

“What do you think, Dr. Milton? What does my dream mean?” I ask, my eyes still shut.

“I think this is a very important dream!” Milton exclaims. “You shouldn’t belittle Levine’s departing words. Undoubtedly, they originate deep in your unconscious, which is ahead of your conscious level of experience. You need to figure out what your unconscious is trying to tell you.” I open my eyes and wiggle my way into a half-way seated position. Milton has a dead serious look on his face. Is this my therapeutic moment of truth? My stomach starts to churn the way it used to when my father would approach me in an agitated state. I remind myself that Milton is not my father. He is on my side. He must just be trying to make sure I don’t evade the lesson in the dream. What is the lesson?

“You began by saying that the dream was disturbing,” Milton continues. “What disturbed you about it? What made you tremble?” I can tell that Milton is going to make me work.

“I felt under extraordinary pressure to decide, to make a choice, yet frozen by a fear that I might make the wrong choice,” I say. “Time was running out. If I didn’t decide, I likely would die in the forest. At the end of the dream, I felt abandoned. My mentors coached me, each pulling me in a somewhat different direction. Then they disappeared. At the end, I was alone and still lost. When I realized it was a dream, I was relieved I had awakened before I could find out whether I had survived or died. I’ve read that if you die in your dream, you’ll soon die in real life.”

“Do you think the dream really was about survival, I mean literally?” Milton questions, implying I may be on the wrong track.

“If not literally, then I guess metaphorically. Hmmm, I suppose it reflects my desire not to feel dead.”

“Uh-huh,” Milton encourages.

“I’m referring to the deadening feeling I’ve disclosed in here before—how I feel when I betray my deepest values and commitments by going through the motions, acting as if I’m really devoted to empiricism and quantitative research.”

“Why do you call your feeling deadening?” Milton puzzles.

“I think of it as a kind of death in life. I’m alive but I may as well be dead. I’m so disgusted with myself.” I stop to take in my own words for a moment.

“Disgusted?” Milton interrupts. He wants me to keep going—not to resist the direction the conversation is taking.

“Disgusted that I’m hiding my real convictions—I’m ashamed. I feel inauthentic, a fake. It’s disgusting that I don’t have the courage to stand behind what I believe.”

“So the dream is a wake-up call?” Milton smiles at the connection he is drawing.

“I suppose you mean the dream rouses me from the living dead. I’m grateful for that observation. Now, I’m a grateful dead person! Ha!” We laugh in unison; then Milton resumes his therapeutic stare.

“Tell me more about the vision of Tucker and Levine that came to you in the dream.” Milton says.

“That seems pretty straightforward to me. Tucker and Levine represent an expression of the paradigm clash I’ve been trying to resolve, you know, empiricism and interpretive social science.”

“Two roads you could travel down in your professional life?”

“Yes, of course, the crux of the dream is the whole question of which path to take to get me out of the forest safely.”

“Safely? Hmm, so you want to make a safe choice. Is that what you’re saying?”

Milton’s question startles me. I’ve wanted to see myself as a risk-taker—within some limits of course—but he’s making me ponder whether I’m protecting something, wanting to play it safe.

“It’s like I’ve said before, Milton, academics talk like liberals and act like conservatives. And empiricism is radically conservative. You are supposed to plod along following in the footsteps of the researchers whose work your research follows. In the dream, I am relieved when Tucker takes me by the hand and leads me down what looks like the right path, the well-worn, well-trodden trail, out of danger. Revolting how easily I acquiesce, isn’t it?”

“But then along comes Levine.”

“Yeah, he messes everything up! Just when I’m on my way out, he comes into the picture and tries to change the frame.”

“Oh, are you sure he’s not saving you?”

“Saving me? At the end of the dream, I haven’t made a choice, which means I may die or suffer mightily overnight in the forest. Levine confuses me. He questions whether the whole mess even is real.”

“Well, it is a dream you know!” Milton grins.

“And then he suggests the audacious notion that the two roads are alike—sort of—and I should more fully appreciate the enveloping mystery of each road and the forest as a whole.”

“Cheeky of him, wasn’t it? I’d like to meet this guy,” Milton kids; then takes a pregnant pause. “But, Art, you know what?”

“What?” I urge.

“I have met him.”

“You have?”

“Yes! Right here in this room.” Milton hesitates. “He’s you!”

“Me?”

“Yes, Tucker’s you too, and he always will be a part of you. He rescued you at a time you needed a father and a mentor. But you’ve played Tucker and that part may have played itself out. I believe Levine represents the person you want to be. He appeals to your desire to confront the mysteries and contradictions of life and to use your imagination. It’s all right there in your dream.”

“But I haven’t been able to put Tucker behind me.”

“No, you haven’t. You feel obliged and loyal to Tucker, the way any good son would out of respect for his father. But sooner or later every son has to find himself and make his own way as free of guilt as he can. We can’t relive our father’s lives. We have to live our own.”

“Is that why Levine insisted that I’m not lost, I only think I’m lost?”

“In a manner of speaking, we’re all lost—and not lost. We’re trying to find our bearings—the meaning of our existence—in a universe that refuses to talk to us or tell us what it wants from us. A few weeks ago, you described yourself as torn between your obligations and your inspirations, beautifully said I should add. And in your dream, Levine reminds you that death is not the problem. Life is the problem. How did he put it?”

“It’s not whether you exist, it’s how you exist!” I reply, thinking again of how many times he repeated that in the course I took from him.

“Yes, that’s it. Within the contingencies and blows of fate over which you have no control, you choose how you exist. You commit to something—something you can believe in and care about. That’s what releases you from the kind of boredom you were resisting by coming into therapy. You want a meaningful existence or you wouldn’t be here, taking this abuse from me,” he kids. “So the way I see it, you’re not lost, you’re scared, as anyone would be who is moving from one mode of being to another, or as you like to say from one paradigm to another.”

“But I haven’t made that move yet. At the end of my dream, I’m still on Tucker’s road.”

“But you’ve hesitated. You’re wavering. You’re not too far down the road to reverse your course. Levine says your predicament is a gift. That’s your unconscious talking, the source of your genuine desire. The gift is right there in front of you. You just have to accept it.”

“Trouble is, Levine can’t guarantee I’ll survive if I go down the other road.”

“No! I think he’s trying to show you that it’s not a question of whether you survive, but whether you thrive. What’s exciting is that you don’t know where that road, the untraveled road, will lead.”

“Exciting, you say. I say terrifying.”

“Sometimes we desire things that excite and terrify us. Nobody leads a meaningful life without ever encountering terrifying moments and experiences.” Milton pauses and brushes a lock of his shiny white hair off his forehead. “If you think about everything we’ve talked about today, that it came to you in a dream, you have to be amazed. When I look at you through the dream, I can’t help but see Art, the dreamer. Metaphorically, it all may boil down to the future you’re dreaming for yourself.”

“You mean to try to make my dream into reality? How very Disney of you, Milton—make your dreams come true! Wish upon a star! Sorry, but I’m too tied to earth for that.”

“Ha. I’m glad you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Milton grins. “You know that’s not what I mean. Not literally, not at all. Not this dream. I’m talking about committing to your dreams.” Milton stops abruptly and nods at the clock. I look at him eagerly awaiting a conclusive ending to our session. Please don’t end without saying something more.

Milton gestures at the clock and says, “The choice in front of you is who you take yourself to be.”