The Dreamseller: The Calling (27 page)

“OK, stop, stop, stop!” Barnabas said. “You’re right. You are the biggest good-for-nothing on the face of the earth.”

“OK, wait. Now, you’re exaggerating, Barnabas!” Bartholomew said, now trying to defend himself.

Watching this madness, I looked up at the stars and said softly, “God, take pity on these idiots. Please, shut them up.” But the businessmen loved watching them. If anything, they wished they could express themselves so honestly and openly as those two. They had worked beside their colleagues for years—or decades—but their spirits were sealed as tightly as the tombs that surrounded them in that cemetery. In the professional world they lived outside the cocoon; in their private lives, they hid inside. They didn’t know how to be a shoulder to cry on. Instead, they disguised their feelings.

“Thank you, you two,” the dreamseller said to my surprise. “You’ve made me recall my own imperfections.”

“You can count on me, chief,” said Honeymouth, shooting me a look. “See that, Superego? You could learn a thing or two from me.”

Then the dreamseller began another story. Many species, he stated, had physical and instinctual advantages over humans. They saw farther, ran faster, leaped further, heard better, could smell aromas a mile away and bite down with incredible force. But we had something they didn’t: a sophisticated brain with more than a hundred billion cells with which to think. Such a sophisticated brain should grant independence, he offered. Nevertheless, he asked his listeners:

“So why do our brains make us dependent on others, especially as infants? Rarely can a four-year-old child survive on his own, while other mammals and lizards the same age no longer have any contact with their parents. Some creatures are already in their full reproductive phase, and others are already elderly at the age of four. Why are we more dependent than the other species, despite loving independence?” he asked.

No one spoke up. They didn’t know the dreamseller was leading them into his marketplace of ideas, the warehouse where he kept his dreams.

An elderly businessman, at least seventy and apparently one of the richest in the audience, took me aside and said in a low voice, “I know that man. Where does he live?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said, adding, “I think you must be mistaken.”

“No, I know that extraordinary mind from somewhere,” he insisted.

Meanwhile, another businessman of about fifty, who had gone bankrupt three times but always made socially responsible investments, answered the dreamseller’s question with a single word: “Education.”

“Magnificent. Education is the key!” the dreamseller said. “Our brain made us totally dependent on gathering the experience accumulated over generations of humans, from our
parents to grandparents. The only way to get these experiences is through education. They’re not genetically transmissible. Education is irreplaceable.”

Then he shook the participants by showing them how deeply their minds were being exploited—and how they could be passing on that mental exploitation to their children.

He explained that parents too often pressured their children to compete, to study incessantly, to take courses, to prepare themselves to survive in the future, without realizing that excessive pressure annihilates the creativity of childhood. It weakens existential values, closes them to new experiences, destroys their humanity.

“Do your children know about the failures in your lives?” he asked. “Do they know how you overcame them? Do they know your fears and your worries? Do they know how courageous you’ve been? Have they explored your most important ideals? Do they know your philosophy on life, about your ability to reason, to analyze, to reflect? And have they seen your tears? Forgive me, but if they don’t know any of this, then you’re simply building machines to be used by the system. If they don’t know these things, they’re missing out on their humanity. And you’re ignoring the very reason our brains made us dependent.”

Then he said something that really unsettled the crowd.

“For just thirty seconds,” he said, “put yourself in your children’s place and think about the epitaphs they would write for the entrance to your tomb.”

The suggestion alone sent many people into a nervous breakdown.

I would hate to know what my son would write about me. He doesn’t know me. I always hid from him. “How can someone living at the edge of society carry around this knowledge? What motivates him? What secrets is he hiding?” I thought.

Finally, the dreamseller took aim at his real target.

“The capitalist system brought about, and continues to bring about, unimaginable gains for society. But it runs a serious risk of imploding in less than a century. Maybe in just a few decades. But it won’t happen the way socialists imagine, through class warfare. There is a problem that lies at its core: It produces freedom of expression and possession, but not freedom of simply being. Capitalism depends on our wants, not on our needs. It depends on chronic dissatisfaction as its engine for consumption. If at some point in time humanity were composed only of poets, philosophers, artists, educators and spiritual leaders, the world’s gross domestic product would collapse, because, in general, these people are more satisfied with just what is necessary. The GDP might suddenly drop thirty or forty percent. Worldwide, hundreds of millions would be unemployed. It would be the greatest depression in history. There would be wars and endless conflicts.”

These arguments left some in the audience with jaws agape. The businessmen hadn’t thought of that. But then, he started to sell the dream of relaxation.

“Getting back to the symptoms I asked you about, I’m going to ask one more question, and if you answer collectively I’ll invite you to open a psychiatric hospital.”

The audience actually laughed.

“Who among you is forgetful? Who has memory lapses?”

Almost everyone raised his hand. They would forget commitments, everyday information, telephone numbers, where they had put items, people’s names.

“Some people are so forgetful that they put their car keys in the refrigerator and look for them all over the house,” he said casually. People laughed. And he went on: “Even funnier are the ones who look for their glasses without realizing they’re wearing them. Others forget the names of colleagues they’ve worked
with for years. The cleverest would ask, ‘Say, what’s your
full
given name?’ when in reality they didn’t even remember their first name.”

Some of the businessmen chuckled because they had used that tactic. I suspect that even the dreamseller had used it.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for those everyday memory lapses, don’t go to a doctor. Why not, you ask?” he asked.

“Because he’s forgetful himself!” yelled out an older man wearing a blue suit and striped gray tie.

They shook their heads at their own stressful lives. They were beginning to understand that the memory lapses, in most cases, were a desperate attempt by the brain to reduce the avalanche of worries.

Bartholomew had raised both hands, indicating that he was super forgetful.

“Chief, how come I always used to forget the names of my mothers-in-law?”

Sometimes we couldn’t stand him. Barnabas, who had known him for years, jabbed back:

“Bartholomew’s been married three times and lived with seven other women. He hasn’t had enough time to learn their names to begin with.”

Honeymouth looked at the audience and opened his hands, as if to say, “I never said I was a saint.” As hard as he tried, for better or worse, he just couldn’t be normal

“I didn’t choose you because of your failures or your successes,” the dreamseller told him, “but because of who you are, because of your heart.”

“I’m forgetful myself, Bartholomew,” the dreamseller continued. “Some people tell me, ‘Teacher, my memory’s lousy.’ And I tell them, ‘Don’t worry, mine’s even worse.’”

I was forgetful, too, but I never would allow my students the same courtesy. I was a tyrant when it came to correcting exams. I
recalled Jonathan, a brilliant debater, who nevertheless couldn’t put the information down on paper. The other professors and I consistently gave him failing grades. Eventually, he failed out. We had called him irresponsible, but he might have been a misunderstood genius. We were the voice of the system. We tossed potential thinkers in the trash bin of education without a trace of remorse. Only now, after I learned to buy dreams of a free mind, did I realize I should have been evaluating my students’ minds. And that might have meant giving the highest grades to someone who gets all the answers wrong.

I felt helpless and heartbroken at seeing all my shortcomings laid bare. I had been unforgiving even with my son. John Marcus suffered from mild dyslexia and couldn’t keep up with his classmates. But I kept the pressure on, asking for more than he could give. If I’m being honest with myself, I wanted him to be an outstanding student in order to enhance my image as father and professor. Any message my son or my students would leave at my tomb wouldn’t be one of praises and longing.

Jurema seemed to understand what I was thinking. She touched my shoulder and said quietly:

“Alexander Graham Bell said that if we tread the path that others have taken, at best we’ll arrive at the places they’ve already been. If we don’t sell new ideas so that students take new paths, they may end up right where these businessmen and -women are today, with ravaged health and broken dreams.”

One by one, the businessmen left, carefully observing the mausoleums they passed. Some of them remembered that from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century an inhuman system had bought and sold black-skinned human beings as if they were animals, locked them in the holds of boats and shipped them off to a terrifying future. Left behind were their friends, their children, their spouses, their freedom.

Today, the system had created a new, erudite slave. It paid them high salaries and gave them health benefits. Their future promised an endless crush of stress, anxiety, dog-eat-dog competition and forced mental labor. Left behind were their children, their spouses, their friends, their dreams. As the dreamseller said, history loves to repeat itself.

T
HE DREAMSELLER’S LATEST CONFERENCES, ESPECIALLY THE
one at Recoleta Cemetery, were all over the media. People noted that even the giants of industry had been seduced by this enigmatic wanderer. The same questions that kept me up nights flooded their minds.

Some said he was the greatest imposter of our time. Others said he was a thinker far ahead of his time. Some argued that he was destroying peace in our society, while others said he was its most ardent defender. Some called him an atheist. Others, a vessel of unfathomable spirituality. Some believed he came from another planet, while others said he was the most human of us all. Maybe it was a mix of all of those things—or none of them at all. Discussing the dreamseller’s identity was the topic du jour in bars, restaurants, coffee shops and even in schools. And the discussions were heated.

The more his fame grew, the more difficult his mission became. He neither gave interviews nor announced the following day’s schedule. Even so he was in the news every time he spoke. When we got angry at the coverage that distorted his ideas, he would calm us down by saying, “There is no free society without a free press. The press makes mistakes, but silence
the press and society will plunge into an endless night without light. It will have a mind without voice.”

He couldn’t go anywhere without being photographed. The dreamseller didn’t appreciate being a celebrity and he was considering moving to another city or country. He thought of selling dreams in the Middle East, Asia, anyplace where people would see him as a mere mortal.

It was no longer possible to hold discussions in small venues. He was a magnet for crowds. Often hundreds would gather spontaneously to hear him speak. He would have to raise his voice, and even so, those farthest away in the crowd couldn’t make out his words. His teaching was passed by word of mouth. He didn’t like holding discussions in closed amphitheaters or using multimedia, preferring to speak outdoors. He liked that anyone who didn’t agree with his ideas could freely and easily leave.

Companies wanted to sponsor him just to associate their image with his. They wanted their marketing to show they, too, were bold, innovative, unpredictable. The very idea of it sent shivers down the dreamseller’s spine. After his refusing countless gifts and offers of money for the use of his image, something unusual happened. Several well-dressed representatives of the powerful Megasoft Group approached us individually, without the dreamseller present, to make what they thought was a lucrative offer.

They first contacted Solomon and Dimas and me. They started out praising the dreamseller’s social work effusively. Society had become more unified, kinder and more human since he had come onto the scene, they told us.

“We know that humility guides his life, that he hates fame, but we want to surprise him with an homage to all that he’s done for society,” they said. “This tribute won’t be about giving him any kind of prize or money—we know he would never accept material goods. But we’d like to show our appreciation
by offering to let him use the city’s largest covered stadium, which our group owns, so he could address more than fifty thousand people all at once. His sermon would be televised, and later rebroadcast as a special prime-time event, to the entire country. Millions would get to hear his message.”