Back when I used to watch TV (it’s been a few years), one of my favorite shows was Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Improv, especially serialized improv, is often too awkward to be funny, but that show had a great formula and still has a big following. Since this is my first post, I should probably point out that I don’t plan on making it a habit to talk about TV shows. In fact, in my journey across trans-Pacific ontologies, I usually can’t help but stick to my well-worn scholarly rut. The academic analysis muscle is my strongest and best trained mental organ, but it is the completely wrong muscle to flex when letting go. So, in pursuit of that freeing improv spirit, Whose Line was on my mind today, and Zhuang Zhou (The Chinese Daoist) setup the scene.
While perusing a translation of the Zhuangzi, when I should have been doing some tedious work at my desk, I scribbled down a passage that had an impact:
There will come a great awakening and only then shall we know the great dream that all this is. Yet the ignorant are sure that they’re awake, sure as sure can be! This one’s a ruler, that one’s a shepherd – they’re absolutely certain of it!
Dreams are kind of a big deal for Zhuangzi. Waking from his infamous butterfly dream, Zhuangzi wondered if he had been dreaming of being a butterfly or if, having fallen asleep, a butterfly was dreaming of being Zhuangzi. Zhuangzi presents a pretty convincing case that there isn’t much of a difference between a dream and a life (Sei: 生). As the quote above reiterates, dreams and life are both limited subjective experiences where you have little control and a finite lifespan.
At work, in my cube, reading the above passage, I thought about all the people around me stressing about client deadlines and their unfinished tasks. I wondered at their future concerns of promotions, layoffs, salaries, and rising status. Never wondering if it is real, never asking if it matters, the ignorant are sure that they’re awake. All of a sudden, a line from an old TV show floated into my head: “Welcome to Whose Line is it Anyway?, the show where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.”
So, whose life is it anyway? Zhuang Zhou or the butterfly?