When I was 20 years old, which was 20 years ago, I was in the middle of a college semester in London and may even have been on the 10-day trip that I took to St.Petersburg and Moscow. I had given up the idea of being a psychologist, and had switched to an English major with the idea of becoming a writer.
I was also in the midst of the my deepest depression, which was probably more significant in terms of my ideations about the future than any of the details above. I was just beginning to lose my religion (Catholicism) due to a crisis of faith. Much of the time found living to be horribly burdensome, but on the flip side, I also wanted to change the world and how people thought about things. I was just starting to learn about Critical Theory and was influenced by that and how it informed artistic and political manifestations in the world. I wanted that, and I wanted to be dead, which one might consider two sides of the same coin. My guess is that was my best effort at envisioning a future self.
I would say that things did turn out—more in underlying principle than in form. I couldn’t have known or imagined the form until I was ready to encounter it. In short and in a manner of speaking, it was coming to a fundamental realization in the last year or so “that life is but a dream.”
Now, I get to “play dead” in a way by being less of a participant in life and more of an observer of it. As a result, I am at peace much of the time—much more than in the past, especially. Life isn’t burdensome, because I can see now how every moment is taking care of itself without my help.
In addition, there’s no world-fixing that needs to be done. Everything is playing out as it is being dreamed up and life persists in spite of the appearance that the sky is often falling.
I’m not perfect at being seated in this sensibility, but I’ve definitely crossed over (ha!).And I would say the end result could be counted as a “yes.”