The Dreamseller_ The Calling - Augusto Cury [38]
I tried taking a deep breath to see if I could get oxygen to my brain. Could I have traces of psychopathy? Classic psychopaths are easily discerned, but those with subtle traces of psychopathy can disguise their insensitivity behind their academic titles, their ethics or their spirituality. I wore a disguise.
I never sought out my son to ask him about his fears, his frustrations. I imposed rules on John Marcus, pointed out his mistakes, but I never sold him the most important dream: That I wanted to know him, to love him and to be loved by him. I never sought out a student who looked sad, irritable or indifferent. I never lent my shoulder for another professor to cry on. To me, professors were technicians and not people. My arrogance turned against me like a boomerang.
When I was ready to give up on life, my colleagues and students had no idea of my emotional state. An intellectual like me couldn’t declare his pain. To them, depression was something that happened to weak people. No one noticed the suffering secretly drawn on my face. Were they blind or was I incapable of showing my feelings? I still don’t know.
As the dreamseller always advised us, no one is a hundred percent villain or a hundred percent victim. I was insensitive but also surrounded by people with low levels of sensitivity. I didn’t need applause or praise. What I needed was just a shoulder to cry on, to feel the support of people saying, “I’m here. You can count on me.”
When the dreamseller made us see the courage and greatness of the young man with OCD, he offered us a challenge: “Are you going to sell dreams to him?” He said nothing more, awaiting our reaction.
We remained silent. After endless seconds with a lump in our throats, we felt lost. It was an odd reaction for a group of supposedly experienced people. We didn’t know what to say. We didn’t know what he would think of us. Just a few minutes earlier we had branded him a lunatic, and now we were afraid of being branded lunatics by him. Isn’t that what insanity is? We went from one extreme to the other.
The dreamseller remained silent and made us uncomfortable. We knew how to ridicule the misfortune of others but not how to alleviate it. We were creative when it came to exclusion but helpless in matters of inclusion. If someone asked the Miracle Worker to deliver a long, bombastic speech to the young man, it would be an easy task, but asking him to sell dreams paralyzed him. If Bartholomew were under the influence and was asked to make friends with the stranger, it would be no problem. But sober, it was much more complicated. If someone asked Angel Hand to steal his wallet then give it back to win his admiration, it would be easy. But charming someone with words was an almost impossible task for him.
If they asked me to teach a class to demonstrate my sophistication, I’d have no problem. But for me to win over a stranger, my fellow man, without using the power of information, was a hellish task. I knew how to address large audiences but not how to engage a man alone. I had been trained to speak about Kant, Hegel, Auguste Comte, Marx, but not about myself. The system had made a mockery of our humanity. And I had nurtured it.
Since there was no instruction manual for selling dreams to an obsessive, and since the dreamseller refused to offer guidance, I shyly tried my hand. I, the most urbane of the group, was also the most unbending. Honeymouth, worn down by life, crouched down and tried to stick his hands in the holes in an effort to initiate contact. But the young man just laughed at him. Bartholomew felt like a fool, and the young man went on with his compulsion.
Edson couldn’t stand watching it. He turned his back and covered his mouth, trying helplessly to stifle his laughter. Suddenly, the obsessive young man stood up and saw the opening in the Miracle Worker’s Dumbo-like right ear. He rushed over and stuck his finger in Edson’s ear, making the Miracle Worker leap to the heavens and shout, “Away with you, demon, this body doesn’t belong