The Stories We Fall Asleep Inside

Thoughts on Meaning and Faith Inspired by Mary Oliver

“But now already the loved ones gather
Under the dome of welcome, as we glide
Over the final jutting mountainside,
Across the suburbs tangled in their lights,

“And settled softly on the earth once more
Rise in the fierce assumption of our lives—
Discarding smoothly, as we disembark,
All thoughts that held us wider for a moment
Up there alone, in the impartial dark.”

— from “Night Flight” by Mary Oliver

This poem is a wonder! Please read it in its entirety here; in fact, buy the book from which it comes (it’s amazing), as I haven’t permission to post the full poem here. It speaks so elegantly to this truth I’ve been trying to get at for several years now…

• that so much of our “reality” is nothing real at all—merely a shared game of pretend we all agree to play.

• that we nevertheless create these elaborate, fanciful stories and build our lives inside them to help us feel safe, and to protect us from loss.

• that once we buy into a story, we will hate and even kill to protect it, even though it is largely a fiction.

• that the real terror hiding underneath our shared fantasy is the True Reality of the “impartial dark,” as Oliver puts it: simply, that we don’t know what we are, why we’re here, or what existence is all about, and we don’t know how we can know.

• that all of this self-protective story crafting lulls us into sleepwalking through life. We live lost in the Matrix, never realizing that we ourselves have created the program that keeps us from having to face the existential dread of our Reality.

• and what is Reality? that we don’t really know who we are or why we are here…that the entire universe is an “impartial dark.”

Such profound uncertainty is nearly unbearable to the human heart. So, in what we perceive as the absence of clear answers, we craft our own. It's a survival response. We are Homo Sapiens Sapiens—the ones who know that they know—but such revelation is a terrible burden. When you wake up, even a little, you find yourself adrift, alone on the rolling waves of an open sea, covered in darkness. Nothing is there to tell you why you are here, or where all this came from. It's quite enough to drive a soul mad, or at least to despair.

So we make up stories of our own. We posit theories. We design paradigms. We create worldviews. Then we go back to sleep inside them. And why shouldn't we? How else are we to survive this? For at least that one truth is clear, we do want to survive. How else will we find a way to live together, but through shared agreement as to what it all means?

Maybe every ideology, every theology, every philosophy is merely a tiny angry fist shaking in defiance against the vast dark of the unknown. Maybe we're all just trying to survive this, even though we don't know why.

So we fully buy into the stories we tell. We get lost in the matrix of our own making the same way an addict gets lost in her high. It's not that we can't wake up. We don't want to! And why should we? Are there really any trustworthy answers for us out there in the dark? Perhaps the ”Unenlightened" are the shrewdest among us after all. Honestly, it’s not bad at all as survival strategies go. 

The tragedy is that we didn't all create the same dream. We didn't all buy in to the same story. And, because we have fully bought into the stories we tell ourselves to the point that we completely forget it's a story at all, now we are hating each other and killing each other over our conflicting fables. We call them competing worldviews or belief systems, and the strife over them may very well destroy us all.

To add to the confusion, some of the worldviews produce objectively worse effects than others. Some create more suffering in humanity than is needed for survival. Some destroy the earth, which again, is essential for our survival. Some refuse to offer dignity to the human soul, and so lead people to the same despair the dream is supposed to help them avoid.

So we hate. We kill. We go to war. We devastate the planet. All in the name of a fictional story we collectively agree to believe. We're trying to survive by escaping into a dream but we can't agree which dream is best, so we may end up destroying ourselves anyway

Can anything be more absurd than this? Could any reality be more meaningless?

But, God…

If there is a God, then everything changes. If there is an Intelligence, a “Something,” as I have written here before, then there really is an answer out there. Then there really is a True Story. There is Intention. And suddenly, just like that, existence isn't about fear of loss or hiding from despair any longer. It's about wonder, and discovery. It's about curiosity, and courage. It's about reaching, and revelation.

We cannot bear the darkness, but for the hope of the Light.

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life."– Jesus, John 8:12

Without God, life is nothing but a choice between dreamy self-deception, and hopeless despair. With God, life is a quest, and hope is suddenly woven into the fabric of our existence.

Could anything be more glorious than this? Could any ambition be more worthy of our lives? To know God and make him known becomes the point of everything.

And, most joyfully I confess, it has become the point of me.