How to Dream of Outer Space When They’re Laughing at Our Face Saying:Wake Up You Need to Make Money?

When it comes to music, I don’t make many discoveries. I often listen to the same albums, artists, and songs over and over again. I don’t have Spotify or anything. There are only a few albums downloaded to my phone. One of them is the Blurryface of Twenty One Pilots. I keep coming back to this one song: Stressed Out. Then, the lyrics of it becomes the title of this article: How to Dream of Outer Space When They’re Laughing at Our Face Saying: ‘Wake Up You Need to Make Money? More than that, the very process of them becoming the title of this article is what this article is all about.

We used to play pretend, give each other different names

We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away

Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face

Saying, “Wake up, you need to make money”

Dreaming of Outer Space in Childhood

There is not a single one of us who didn’t dream of outer space or play pretend as a child. Our toddler brains were hungry for new connections. Although we had a very limited amount of memory and little information available we built new neural networks faster and more creatively than ever. Our minds were open, literally. We had few information inputs here and there. We constantly formed new connections. Our brains were hungrier, faster and more creative than ever. Dreaming of outer space happened naturally.

Many of us probably saw this viral video of a dad teaching his son how to play t-ball. It was watched more than 15 million times. Oh, and it is one of my favorites!

This little child has a very limited amount of memory with an open mind. He is constantly on the search for new information. In this video, his dad instructs him: ‘keep your eyes on the ball’. He brings the pieces of information he has together and acts on the outcome. He keeps his eyes on the ball! He knows what the followings are:

1. A ball

2. The meaning of the verb keep

3. One’s eyes

Let’s look at his newly discovered connection: .

Born Unfinished

Humans are born unfinished. The human brain comes into the world with some amount of genetic hardwiring (breathing, crying, suckling). Compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, human brains are unusually incomplete at birth. The human brain shapes itself. (David Eagleman, The Brain, pg. 5) A child's brain is where any and every shape is in the process of making. Therefore a child’s brain is an open, endless field of opportunities.

Dreaming of Outer Space in Adulthood

Creativity comes from the self. What we call as self is a huge volume of memory. All the experiences in our life — from single conversations to our broader culture — shape the microscopic details of our brain. Neurally speaking, who we are depend on where we have been. Our brain is a relentless shape-shifter, constantly rewriting its own circuity — and because our experiences are unique, so are the vast, detailed patterns in our neural networks. Because they continue to change our whole life, our identity is a moving target that never reaches an endpoint. (David Eagleman, The Brain, pg. 6) Yet the question remains:

How do we dream of outer space when they’re laughing at our face saying wake up you need to make money?

Our relentless shape-shifter simply needs new information and to keep forming new connections. Whether they’re laughing at our face saying wake up you need to make money or not, by simply working on adding new ‘inputs’ to our brain, making it possible to create new neural networks, we can still play pretend. It is only harder and requires effort. Our day to day lives, in many cases, require us to create the same patterns of neural networks over and over again: walking the same way everyday, speaking to the same people about the same things, doing almost the same things e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y over and over, and over again. Think of these networks as threads, we tie them together each and every time we go from point A to point B. Doing the same things over and over again make the knots stronger and stronger. Then it gets harder to open up for new possibilities, to form new connections, to collect new information and make up brand new networks.

Doing one new thing a day, walking a different path to the grocery store, listening to a new song or in this case to the same song over and over again (that works too, somehow!),making new friends, reading about things that we strongly disagree with, spending time with toddlers (witnessing wild creativity and being in a constant state of awe) helps free our minds a little.

We used to play pretend, give each other different names

We would build a rocket ship and then we’d fly it far away

Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face

Saying, “Wake up, you need to make money”

I want to add a few other things I recall writing this article below:

1. Dr. Joon Yun suggests that we should be teaching medicine to kids. They are able to see what we can never see.

Link to Dr. Yun’s TEDx Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddJ2fg1nC5Y

2. Quote from the book Knowing Yourself by The School of Life: “It can be easier to master the dynamics of another planet than grasp what is at play in the folds of our own brains” pg.10

3. Lyrics from the song Strange from LP: “We are all strange, and it ain’t never ever gonna change” : )

4. Last but not least, a shot that I made of an installation (artist unknown, San Francisco, 2019):

with peace,

Gozde