Double Pretend It's Real

Life is... mostly uninteresting. I mean... yes you're living in a sci-fi movie, etc, but... come on. Your daily commute is, sci-fi or not, Boring. It's the same every day. You got used to it.

Wouldn't it be cooler, if, say, you went to, um, Japan? and took the train and could be like the protagonist in your favorite anime series?

(... isn't there something exciting, just looking at entirely ordinary buildings in anime series and just thinking that you could be living in one?)

Of course, if you were living in one, you'd think about how really great it would be to live in America, The United States Of. (Or... insert whatever country you're currently residing in.) The grass is always greener on the other side, after all!

Can we... stop this, somehow?

Well. There is a fun thought exercise that you can try.

Let's say, you are in a nondescript apartment in the Silicon Valley. You have been, for a while. You sometimes remember how cool high school class trips were. However irrational this might feel.

Now, instead of either reminiscing about the Cool High School Days (no, seriously, I actually have a video of myself, from early undergrad, talking about how This Is Not The Fun Times You Should Remember), or planning on becoming a billionaire ("it's not true happiness until I have that yacht"), ...

let's pretend you're on a high school class trip, sitting on a random bus (it's not a very good bus, you're in Eastern Europe, buses weren't especially good), staring out of the window, daydreaming about how, one day, you'll make it to the Silicon Valley, and you'll have an entire apartment, right there. You'll be able to buy, just, probably, as many books as you want, you can sit around on a balcony in an armchair that's a lot more convenient than the bus seat you are currently occupying. You can go work on cutting edge things, talk to interesting people, you have Power and Freedom and the Lack Of Mandatory German Language Lessons. Surrounded by all these awesomely unusual things; cars have automatic transmissions, roads are super wide, there is a lot of lakes, .... you can just, if you want, start a company, and...

... and at this point you stop layering imaginary worlds, open your eyes, and look around.

If you're only adding one layer of imagination, the excitement is lost once you're back. Yep, still not Japan.

Unlike most times when you lose yourself in imaginary worlds though, the differences between the one that is two layers down & the one you're in are... not remarkable. You're in your imaginary cool apartment. For real. It's actually pretty awesome.

The main difference is that back on that bus, you thought you'd be Actually Doing Things, once you get to the fancy part.

Are you doing Things?