"Who put all that [gold] there?" yelped Zaphod, goggle-eyed.
"Don't get excited," said Ford, "it's only a catalog."
"A who?"
"A catalog," said Trillian, "an illusion."
"How can you say that?" cried Zaphod, falling to his hands and knees and staring at the ground. He poked it and prodded it. It was very heavy and very slightly soft--he could mark it with his fingernail. It was very yellow and very shiny, and when he breathed on it his breath evaporated off it in that very peculiar and special way that breath evaporates off solid gold.
"Trillian and I came round a while ago," said Ford. "We shouted and yelled till somebody came and then carried on shouting and yelling till they got fed up and put us in their planet catalog to keep us busy till they were ready to deal with us. This is all Sens-O-Tape."
Zaphod stared at him bitterly.
"Ah, shit," he said, "you wake me up from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else's." He sat down in a huff.
"What's that series of valleys over there?" he said.
"Hallmark," said Ford. "We had a look."
"We didn't wake you earlier," said Trillian. "The last planet was knee-deep in fish."
"Fish?"
"Some people like the oddest things."
"And before that," said Ford, "we had platinum. Bit dull. We thought you'd like to see this one though."
Seas of light glared at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked.
Everyone has different dreams. A planet of gold. A planet filled with fish. A planet where Donald Trump was never born. A planet where cell phones never existed. A planet designed to be one big Disney World. A planet where mental illness and addiction could simply be cured by eating a vanilla ice cream cone or a banana split. I could go on.
Dreams are wonderful things, fueled by imagination and hope and perfection. Of course, I know that living a life of dreams is not healthy. No matter how much I want it, I probably will never wake up, get dressed, and go out to breakfast with Charles Dickens, Barack Obama, and Flannery O'Connor. Not gonna happen.
Yesterday, I was speaking with a very smart person about things that are happening in my life. At one point in our conversation, this person said to me, "You know, people who say things like 'Well, this is God's will' and 'God has a plan in all this' are full of shit. There's this little thing called freewill involved in everything. What God has is foreknowledge of the consequences of each choice a person makes."
Imagine a world of alternate choices. What if, 2,000 years ago, the Roman centurions hammering ordered to hammer those spikes into Christ's hands and feet had made the choice to set him free instead? What if Adolf Hitler had spent his whole life as a struggling artist, painting and painting and painting? What if Eve had never taken a bite of that apple?
I can see the path of the choices I've made, how one decision led to another decision that led to another decision, on and on, leading to where I am at this moment. Of course, no choice is perfect, unless you're Jesus Christ. Christ was fully human, with freewill, just like the rest of us. Yet, he made all the right decisions and went on to save the human race from itself.
This morning, I'm thinking about the perfect world of my choices. What planet I thought/wish my decisions would have landed me. My personal Magrathean planet, designed to my specifications. It would look a lot like the planet I live on now. The same place--the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (perhaps with milder winter weather). The same people--my wife, daughter, son, sisters, brothers, sisters-in-law, family, friends. Because I love the people in my life and where I have chosen to make my home.
Now, for the perfection. My life and the people in it would be free of mental illness and addiction. Every day, I would watch my wife and children flourish in healthy, loving ways, our lives simply a measure of the love we have for each other and the world around us.
In the morning, I would get up, wander into my study, and write poetry for several hours. I would drop these poems in the mail in the afternoon. In a few days' time, I would receive a check in the mail for those poems, providing enough money to pay my bills, fill my cupboards and refrigerator, and allow me to put some aside for rainy days, which never arrive.
I would teach full-time at the university, and I would have the respect of my colleagues and students. I would be the poet every student wants as a professor. Young people would enroll as English majors just because they want to be in my classes. I would be able to teach courses like "Introduction to Sacred Poems" and "Spiritual Autobiography" and "The Mythos and Poetry of Star Wars."
And, at the end of the night, my daughter will kiss me goodnight; my son will hug me and say "You're the best daddy in the whole world!"; my wife and I will sit in our living room for an hour or so, discussing the day's events; and then, around eleven, we would go to bed, fall asleep in each other's arms, telling each other how much we love each other.
That is my perfect world, the perfect result of the choices I have made in my life, everything scrubbed clean of pain and hurt and illness and disappointment. My mansion on a hill, as the old gospel song goes.
No person lives in her/his perfect world. Yet, it's wonderful to imagine it. Yes, I'm getting a little John Lennon here. I have found myself imagining it a lot in recent weeks. It gets me through long days of struggle. I'm not sure it's a healthy practice, but I also believe a life without hope isn't really a life I want a part of.
And Saint Marty still hopes to find a room in his mansion on a hill.
A picture a friend sent me yesterday that fills me with hope . . .
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