“Can you see me? Can you hear me?”

The disembodied voice repeats.

“Can you see me? Can you hear me?”

It’s like a seance, except everybody is dead.
Not dead, no, but not really alive, either. Pretending.
But that’s the game. We play pretend.

This is a pretend place. Just faces on a screen.
Different places, mashed together to make a place that is not any place.
There is no there there, here.

Maybe that’s why we can’t see, can’t hear.
Can’t be done, when none of it is real.

We played pretend when we were kids.
We were good at it.
So why doesn’t this feel good?

Children go to real imagined places.
Adults go to imagined real places.

Different journey. Different destination.

Kids want to be there.
Desire makes it real.

What do you want?

Nobody wants to be in this meeting.
They just want the project to hit its milestone, the product to be delivered, the client to be happy.

But nobody wants milestones or delivery dates or clients.
They just want to keep their jobs.

But nobody wants to keep their jobs.
They just want to get paid.

But nobody wants to get paid.
They just want money.

But nobody wants money.
They just want a roof over their heads and food on their tables and a good score on their credit reports.

But nobody wants roofs or food or tables or credit.
They just want to stop being afraid.

Meetings and jobs and money doesn’t keep anybody from being afraid.
Never could.
Maybe that’s why nobody sees anybody.

But I see you.

Nobody wants to circle back, follow up, drill down.
These are made up words.
An invented language for an invented existence.
A thieves’ argot.

Maybe that’s why nobody hears anybody.

But I hear you.

The pretend people in this pretend place can’t say who they are.
Can’t say where they want to go or where they have been.
The backgrounds are simulated.
Computer-generated.
Neutralized.
Safe.

Maybe that’s why nobody knows anybody.

But I know you.

When you were small, you were not afraid of being afraid.
Danger? Adventure.
You were scared of the dark, but ran down the hallway from the bedroom to the bathroom in the middle of the night anyhow.
You were a hero.

You did not need assurance or insurance or validation.
You just ran.
You were fast.

Adults don’t run.
They’re in too much of a hurry to run.
They’ve learned to turn on the light.
What have they learned?
And what have they missed?

There is a nurturing dark.
There is growth and beauty in the unknown.
Questions and mystery and not knowing are good things.

Adults don’t have time for that.
Too busy pretending.

Adults change what is into what is acceptable.
The light comes on.

Do we change the world?
Or do we let ourselves be changed?

Animals evolve to reach higher branches, to hide from predators, to fly away.
We humans used to evolve, too.
But not any more.
Now we do not evolve.
Letting the world change us makes us look weak. That’s what they say.

We do not evolve.
We invent.

We invent shovels and axes, ladders and airplanes and scuba tanks and air conditioning.
And email.
And spam.
And spam blockers.

Inventions are made up, contrived, imaginary, imperfect.
Imperfect things spawn their own opposites.
They contain the seeds of their own corruption.
That’s how we can tell.

Hibernation is perfect. Migration is perfect.
The wings of a falcon and the howl of a wolf and the song of a whale are perfect.

You are perfect, too.
You are a perfect soul.
Perfectly strong, perfectly free.
Perfectly wild.

I see you. I hear you. I know you.

Ted Levitt and Rube Goldberg had cocktails with John Calvin and Adam Smith and made up a world.

But I think they were just kidding.
Nobody serious would live there.

No child would play there.

Where do you want to play?

Desire makes it real.
I see you because I want to.
I hear you because I need to.
I know you because something inside you wants to come out.
It needs to.

So what if the world saw that version of you?
The child who plays?
The Dreamer who dreams?

So much of the abstraction game is about approval.
What would they all say if you and I told the truth?

Let’s try.

Approval can’t come until we stop seeking it.
What we want from other people, even the faces on the screen, is to see them unmasked and wild and true.
That’s what they want from us, too.

But what would they say?

Don’t be afraid.
The only real danger here is suffocation under all those abstractions, all that armor.

But what would they say?

Why would you expect them to have words for you?
You are going to a place they have not been.
Not for a very long time.
Their language will be foreign.
It is from a different place. A pretend place.
It has nothing to do with your native tongue.

Or theirs.

Maybe they just need to find the way back.

I see a child in you.
The child can listen to the rain, and play in it, without worrying about possible holes in the roof, financing shingles, carrying debt, working it off, keeping a job, showing up on time.

The weathervane is not the wind.
For how long will we subsist on a thing pushed by a thing pushed by a thing?
Wolves howl at the moon, not at their idea of it.

I see a Dreamer in you.
The Dreamer can see things as they are.
In seeing, the Dreamer creates room to breathe.
And kick, and be.

Let’s meet the child.
Let’s meet the Dreamer.
It’s been a long time.

You and I and everybody can remember times when we saw something true.
Something beautiful, or noble, or funny.
Something so real that we let ourselves be changed by it.

Can you see it? Can you hear it?

That is the new, old game.
Let’s play.