Rowan Mangan:
And I’m Rowan Mangan. And this is, yes, it sure is, another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure it out. How are you, Marty?

Martha Beck:
Baffled as crap because I’m trying to write a damn book that I keep starting over on, so yes I’m…

Rowan Mangan:
Why do you keep insisting on writing these books?

Martha Beck:
Oh, I think I’ve got it done and then it just starts to come out again. It’s a little bit like having a runny nose really, but then you have to make something beautiful and decorative out of what comes out. It’s awful. It’s great. I’m loving it. How you doing?

Rowan Mangan:
I can’t complain. I mean that figuratively. I will complain.

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Obviously there will be complaints. Actually, I would like to complain right now. For those of you watching on YouTube, I’ve broken my glasses and I’m wearing glasses that are half on and half off, and it’s…

Martha Beck:
Oh, baby, that is a quick ticket to seasickness. I’ve had that problem so many times.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I already feel unsteady.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. It’s like [inaudible 00:01:43]. Your inner ear goes, what? I’m sorry you broke your glasses, or I think [inaudible 00:01:49].

Rowan Mangan:
Like I said, I can’t complain, but I will.

Martha Beck:
Clearly you can, but you may not. You may not.

Rowan Mangan:
Fair enough.

Martha Beck:
You’ll figure out how to deal with that. What else are you trying to figure out, Rowy?

Rowan Mangan:
Okay. I have a piece to say.

Martha Beck:
Oh my goodness.

Rowan Mangan:
So this is what I’m trying to figure out, Marty. Is it a feature of our time, of this very specific time that we live in, that we all now watch TV that’s in our own language and movies, but we switch the subtitles on because that’s a thing that we can do, right? That’s everyone, right? I think it’s pretty much everyone.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
In many ways, life is greatly enhanced by having the subtitles, right?

Martha Beck:
True.

Rowan Mangan:
But we have certain experiences when we watch television with the subtitles on that that I wonder if they’re universal. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out. So one of the things that you and I take great umbrage with is the number of types of sounds that are subtitled as scoffs.

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s weird because in my life, scoff was a very specific thing that you do.

Martha Beck:
If I came to you and said, Rowy, show me a scoff, what would you do? Exactly. It’s spelled [inaudible 00:03:23].

Rowan Mangan:
Mine’s spelled [inaudible 00:03:27].

Martha Beck:
That’s the Australian. It goes the other direction.

Rowan Mangan:
But there are all kinds of things that are labeled scoffs these days.

Martha Beck:
It’s true. I’ve noticed this, which shows you how much is going on in our lives.

Rowan Mangan:
I know, right. This even makes it worse. We were talking on international Zoom call to my father and stepmother about this because that’s how busy our lives are. And dad was saying his favorite version of this is when you just… It’s never the words they say that are funny. It’s the descriptions of what they’re doing. And so my dad’s favorite was just when it just says pants.

Martha Beck:
Oh, you mean like…

Rowan Mangan:
He finds that delightful. Like someone’s going [inaudible 00:04:12].

Martha Beck:
Pants.

Rowan Mangan:
Pants. And I saw a meme recently that had… You know there’s that show called Stranger Things?

Martha Beck:
No but I’ll go along.

Rowan Mangan:
There’s a massive cultural phenomenon of a show called Stranger Things.

Martha Beck:
Well, that’s why I don’t know anything about it.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s right. And there’s a character in the show called Eleven. And so then I saw a great meme that was built from a still from the show with the subtitles turned on, but then the title of the meme was, me packing for a weekend away, and the subtitle said Eleven pants, and I found it delightful, Marty.

Martha Beck:
That is a long, long way to go for a punchline, but you know what? It’s worth it. It’s worth it.

Rowan Mangan:
Hey, you know what? Scoffs. I scoff at that right now.

Martha Beck:
Actually I think that’s delicious.

Rowan Mangan:
What are you trying to figure out if you’re so smart?

Martha Beck:
Rowy, I am trying to figure out how to tolerate a future trip to the home of your birth. To the land of your birth.

Rowan Mangan:
The antipodes, Australia itself.

Martha Beck:
Because yes, I’m all about the wildlife and I’ve been looking them up and there are weird damn things in your home country of Australia.

Rowan Mangan:
Famously. And not just the people.

Martha Beck:
I was looking forward to perhaps cuddling a koala. What good red-blooded American child does not grow up wanting to cuddle a koala? They tell us they’re cuddly. And then you look at their feet. I challenge anyone listening to this to go look up koala feet and not have nightmares for weeks. Really.

Rowan Mangan:
First of all, I just like to wager that 1% or less of our listenership will look up koala feet based on…

Martha Beck:
Oh, I bet we’ll get emails showing like they’re horror-stricken faces or them scoffing at koala feet.

Rowan Mangan:
They might pant.

Martha Beck:
They might pant. They might Eleven pant. I’m not even kidding, Koala front paws have three fangy little toes. I guess those would be claws.

Rowan Mangan:
Even their toes have teeth.

Martha Beck:
And their toes. This is the weird thing. They don’t have opposable thumbs. They have two opposable thumbs that are parallel to each other. Imagine if you will, a human hand with claws, claws, claws on it, where instead of one thumb sticking out, there are three fingers and two thumbs sticking out parallel to each other. It will shake you when you see this, shake you emotionally.

Rowan Mangan:
If they’ve got two opposable thumbs, you’d think they’d be the overlords of us by now.

Martha Beck:
They probably are building technologies we can’t even imagine, and hiding them out there in the desert. And then their hind paws look like something’s been cut off. They just have this three toes and this random nub. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. I don’t see how evolution could have selected for it. I think it’s got to be like master lords from some other planet. Plus wombats and other of your home buddies, pooping cubes. Cubes, I tell you. I’m not joking.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s not my fault.

Martha Beck:
It is too. Look, somebody’s got… I’m going to write a letter to the government.

Rowan Mangan:
You requesting that wombats begin pooping in ovals?

Martha Beck:
Normal ways.

Rowan Mangan:
Spheres?

Martha Beck:
Yes, cubicle poop might just blow my entire mind if I see it. You better protect me. And then I just read a book in which a platypus almost kills someone. A platypus would just kill you as it looks at you I find. And if they weren’t seven inches long and aquatic, I would be afraid for our child’s life if we go to America, I mean to Australia. The platypuses would kill her.

Rowan Mangan:
I only found out quite recently, well, let’s just say it’s not that recently, but later than you’d think that platypus are as small as they are. I somehow grew up… Because they’re quite elusive in the Australian context. They’re hard to pin down.

Martha Beck:
They don’t just come out of the tap when you turn on the water?

Rowan Mangan:
No, that’s snakes and spiders. And I really thought they were big. I thought they were roughly wombat sized. But slimmer.

Martha Beck:
What? About the size of a koala?

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, this is so confusing. It’s all so relative, isn’t it?

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my God. All marsupials are relative. It’s horrifying. I’m really sorry. I’ll work on the shape of their poop before we get there.

Martha Beck:
Thank you. Thanks.

Rowan Mangan:
Pants.

Martha Beck:
Pants.

Rowan Mangan:
Pants.

Martha Beck:
Scoff.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, Marty, I really feel like we should move on to today’s topic, don’t you?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, I think we really should. Enough time has been spent in these horrors.

Rowan Mangan:
Agreed. We’ll be right back with more Bewildered. I have a favor to ask. You might not know this, but ratings and reviews are like gold in the podcasting universe. They get podcasts in front of more faces, more eyes, more ears, all the bits that you could have a podcast in front of, that’s what they do. So it would help us enormously if you would consider going over to your favorite podcasting app, especially if it’s Apple and giving us a few stars, maybe even five, maybe even six. If you can find a way to hack the system, I wouldn’t complain. And a review would also be wonderful. We read them all and love them. So thank you very much in advance. Let’s just go out there and bewilder the world.

Martha Beck:
Okay, so what is today’s topic, Row?

Rowan Mangan:
So we’re going to talk about the old making dreams come true.

Martha Beck:
Oh, that.

Rowan Mangan:
That old one.

Martha Beck:
It’s an idiom, but what…

Rowan Mangan:
It’s not just an idiom.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. What is it?

Rowan Mangan:
It’s a topic of a podcast.

Martha Beck:
It’s a topic. But it’s not every dream, right?

Rowan Mangan:
No.

Martha Beck:
Not the dream where a wombat kills you with its cubic poops.

Rowan Mangan:
No, not even remotely.

Martha Beck:
It’s [inaudible 00:10:28].

Rowan Mangan:
I sure hope it’s not anyway. But no, we wanted to talk about a very specific kind of dream. Those magical, huge, big dreams. I want to change my life dreams, right?

Martha Beck:
You can have bucket list dreams. I saw the Mona Lisa. I’m glad I did. It didn’t really change my life. I’m excited to have seen it, but it’s not going to change my life.

Rowan Mangan:
It might’ve changed someone else’s life.

Martha Beck:
It may have. Yeah, maybe somebody saw it and went, that is going to shape the rest of my life and became an art history major and just stands there by the Mona Lisa now. I can see that happening.

Rowan Mangan:
But it wasn’t yours.

Martha Beck:
It was not my direction in life that was affected by the Mona Lisa. It was just a check on my bucket list. And that’s great. I’m glad I have it. But the dreams we’re talking about are the ones that change everything. And by the way, if you don’t have dreams of how you want your life to go, you will adopt the dreams of the culture because you always follow what you’re thinking about, but you don’t know that you’re thinking about a typical pattern of life for your culture. But that’s the culture’s dream. And you’ll just end up letting your society dream your life for you, and that might not be good for you.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s wild. That’s horrifying. It’s pants and scoffs and just fears.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. It’s like having someone throw a platypus right at you.

Rowan Mangan:
Right at you. I was thinking about this kind of dream as way station dreams. It’s not like they’re your final destination. You’ve got this big dream to do this, that or the other, but they’re a significant stopping point on your journey, like an interim destination. And so if our lives are this big beautiful arc, these sort of dreams are significant enough stopping points that it almost feels like our true nature is directing us toward them, towards each of them to keep us on the larger track.

Martha Beck:
Yes. I always tell people life is like a game, if you’re getting warmer or you’re getting colder. And it’s almost like there are points that are red hot and you need to go to them. And I love that way station means a stopping point on a longer journey. I didn’t really know that until we started to talk about this. But moving from one important way station to another is basically writing the story of your life. So don’t let anyone else make that map for you.

Rowan Mangan:
Right, and I think… So I have this vibe that if you can sort of glean a bit about what that life arc is going to look like overall by just as a fun exercise, plotting backwards and looking at the way stations you’ve sort of stopped at so far. And if each one’s a point and you’re connecting the dots, you can be like, oh, this is this kind of a shape. Oh, wonder what’s going to be the next point in that.

Martha Beck:
I know you told me that you wanted to go to a certain school because you were reading Enid Blyton books when you were a little girl and you thought boarding school is the most fun thing in the world.

Rowan Mangan:
Midnight treats and Mam’zelle the French teacher and all the tricks we’d play on her.

Martha Beck:
Oh, we laughed. How we laughed.

Rowan Mangan:
How we laughed.

Martha Beck:
And you didn’t go to boarding school, but you did end up finding your way as quite a young person to a school that was a long way away from you and put your life on a whole different path, yeah?

Rowan Mangan:
Totally. And other people were at boarding school there.

Martha Beck:
That’s true.

Rowan Mangan:
It was a boarding school. I just didn’t sleep there.

Martha Beck:
Was Mam’zelle there?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, she was. And honestly, she’s quite terrifying in the flesh.

Martha Beck:
Is she, really? But you’ve talked fondly about other teachers and sometimes… Now, there are people who are way stations. There are schools that are way stations. I was so baffled when my life arc took me out of academia. I’m like, oh, I’m so glad that’s over. I hate that. And then I just had to pick up a few classes at a business school and suddenly develop this longing to teach there, which is so weird. I was out of academia. I didn’t like business. Only in hindsight did I realize that that school was an international school. So all the students were big travelers who really ignited my own dreams of travel. And I also learned how to run a business not knowing that I would later come to run my own business. And then I developed a passion for going to Africa. And that’s where I met you and then we were there when we first thought, oh my gosh, maybe we should have a baby and all these.

Rowan Mangan:
And now that very baby is what fuels… Complaining about her is what fuels most of the content for this podcast.

Martha Beck:
That’s probably the reason for all of it.

Rowan Mangan:
All of it. You taught business school in your 20s because we were going to have a baby to complain about in your 60s.

Martha Beck:
And listener, whoever you are, you are the end point of our way station journey.

Rowan Mangan:
For now.

Martha Beck:
For now. And you actually put this idea in very concrete terms because you were sitting around the house the other day literally planning a way station journey.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, so regular listeners probably know where this little line of conversation is going. So I recently was… I thought I’ll plunge into this new world order where we have robot overlords now. And I asked ChatGPT to plot me a course from New Hope, Pennsylvania to San Jose, Costa Rica by van, traveling by van, duh.

Martha Beck:
Van.

Rowan Mangan:
Sleep, camping in national forests and state parks and no more than five hours a day and da da da. And I was doing this and we’re going to be…

Martha Beck:
It was very frightening to watch her doing this. She was talking as if to a person. Plot me a course. I think, who is she talking to?

Rowan Mangan:
Robot overlords. And the scary thing is that now they know where I’ll be sleeping.

Martha Beck:
That’s true. I can send the koalas for you.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my God, we’re joking about it, but I’m actually really scared. All right. So that was cool I will say, and I was enjoying the van fantasy. The vantasy.

Martha Beck:
The vantasy. A new description for your style of life.

Rowan Mangan:
And we’re going to be talking about how when you start dreaming way station dreams, which this literally was me planning the way station of the dream.

Martha Beck:
Yip, of the van dream.

Rowan Mangan:
The van dream.

Martha Beck:
The vantasy.

Rowan Mangan:
The vantasy. That’s right. Hashtag van life fantasy. So we’re going to be talking about how when you’re dreaming these dreams, the culture will often rise up to resist you. So what happened was, I’m just happily chatting with the robots about how to run my life. And Karen, our beloved, rose up as she sometimes is what to do. And she said to me, you can’t drive to Costa Rica. And I was furious, Marty, because I was pretty sure that what she was going to say was going to be culture dashing my dreams through my beloved [inaudible 00:18:14]. And I stood up to meet her and I said, why the hell not? She looked me straight in the eye Marty, and she said, you can’t drive to Costa Rica because Costa Rica is an island. At which point I asked ChatGPT to show us a little map of Central America and how it works. So anyway, she wasn’t being a mouthpiece of the culture in that moment. She was just struggling from a little misunderstanding of geography. So that was good.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. And you were the one who dashed her dream of sailing to the island of Costa Rica.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s true. I did dash her dream. Sorry Karen.

Martha Beck:
Because Row is planning this way in her vantasy life, we’ve been talking about what’s our next way station dream along the road. And it turned out to be a combination of the figurative, it is a goal, a thing you want to do, and literal travel, because we decided that we want to live a kind of international life where we’re very closely, physically connected to what we think of as our global family, the people we love who literally live all over the world. And the thing is, it’s not that we just thought this up. We’ve had it… I mean, you’re from Australia, I think I’ve pointed out.

Rowan Mangan:
I think we’ve established that pretty clearly.

Martha Beck:
So from the moment we got together, it was assumed that we’d be traveling back and forth, and we both want to go back to Africa and travel and see other things. You, I think are dying to go back to skiing in Kyrgyzstan, one of the great adventures of your traveling life. Kyrgyzstan is wonderful for skiing, not so much right now. Anyway, the thing is then it was pandemic and lockdown and pregnancy and little baby and all these obstacles. But here’s the deal. As we realized sitting around the other day, the dream won’t go away. And hitting obstacles is not a sign that your dream isn’t a real one or your way station dream isn’t real. It’s a sign that your dream is being tested. Will it stand up to the pressures of everyday life and remain stuck in your consciousness? Yeah, I want this. I dream of this and this one did. And that’s one of the signs that it’s a real way station dream.

Rowan Mangan:
And so now we’re having a lot of fun trying to imagine our lives in different seasons where we’ll be living and working from different places and being more mobile as a family. And it’s super fun.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, it sounds a little improbable, right? It did to me. Like, okay, we went to Africa and back with a two-year-old, and you may have heard me say this folks already, but I look back… We thought this was going to be so hard traveling… These endless plane trips with a young toddler.

Rowan Mangan:
We’re so naive. We just thought it was going to be awful.

Martha Beck:
I know, and we went through all these ridiculous possibilities about how bad it could be, but in actuality, it was so much worse.

Rowan Mangan:
So much worse than we ever thought it could be.

Martha Beck:
Oh my God. I don’t know. In fact, at one point, Lila, a two-year-old literally yelled in the airplane… First she yelled, I need more space. And then she was starting to yell, oh my God, oh my God. We weren’t popular with the air flight attendants.

Rowan Mangan:
And Marty had the unique experience for her as a mother leaning forward in an airport to catch her child’s projectile vomit in her cupped hands, which is kind of beautiful.

Martha Beck:
It was always [inaudible 00:22:15].

Rowan Mangan:
If you don’t think too much about the vomit of it all.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, and there I was standing in an African airport.

Rowan Mangan:
Sort of squatting.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, kind of more squatting by the stroller where our child was screaming bitterly. And I just had this handful of… Hands full of vomit, a memoir, a travel guide for mothers of toddlers. It was horrible. And it was totally worth it. Completely and totally worth it.

Rowan Mangan:
100% do it all over again with twice the vomit.

Martha Beck:
Okay. But you get to catch at least one of the handfuls, all right?

Rowan Mangan:
We’re going to argue about vomit offline.

Martha Beck:
Okay. Anyway, I just have to say that only our child whom I still suspect is at least half some kind of weird Greek God, because we don’t know who the donor is yet really. But she meant to vomit across two continents and an ocean. I think that is an almost Olympic Godlike capacity. When she spews, she spews overseas. Anyway, a way station dream may have a lot of difficulty attached to it, but it’s still exciting. It’s still crazy exciting. And that’s how you know it’s real. It’s got to be a little hard and it’s got to be really exciting.

Rowan Mangan:
And sort of really fascinating too with this international life thing. It’s like we just sort of playing with it, like play dough. Regularly we pull it out and just mold it into something that looks a little bit different and put it back again, pull it out again.

Martha Beck:
And every now and then you make a little knob that is like, oh, I never thought of that before. We could do this. And what you want is it to look kind of weird. If you’re doing something that looks perfectly doable and like things you’ve seen people do all your life, you’re probably inside the culture still. And I think the fun is to push it beyond what the culture would tell you to do and dream something weird that really excites you, and then you kind of know it’s you. And also in my mind, I know it’s sort of inspired because I haven’t learned it from the people around me. It’s coming from somewhere else.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, which sort of links back to when we talked about the pull in an earlier episode that we’re being pulled by something mysterious that we can’t quite understand. So it’s going to be interesting. So one of the things we were saying that is a sort of feature or a characteristic of a way station dream is that the culture will likely not like it very much. So let’s talk a little bit about what it looks like when the culture bites back against our dreams.

Martha Beck:
The culture will scoff. It will scoff like crazy tense.

Rowan Mangan:
It will pant.

Martha Beck:
And I have to say, most people never even get to the point where other folks, like our beloved Karen, who can slap them down by telling them that a country is an island. Most people never get to the point where they risk even thinking their real way station dreams because the culture is… The psychological word is interjected. It’s interjected into our thinking so that our very dreams are constrained by what the culture has taught us. It can limit our dreams even before they’re born, by teaching us not to think of anything weird.

Rowan Mangan:
Right, or by having internalized the voice of the culture. We’ll shout down our own dreams when they start rising before we can even really give voice to them ourselves.

Martha Beck:
Well said, yes. That really happens.

Rowan Mangan:
And then of course, if you can fight through those inner voices, I’m sure that we’ll always find that the culture’s always happy to provide mouthpieces in the form of your mother-in-law or your coworker or your kids or your bestie.

Martha Beck:
Somebody’s always there saying something like, ooh, but you can’t afford it. That’s the first one. How are you ever going to afford that? Or even, what gives you the right to do that? Nobody does that. What about your responsibilities as a citizen or whatever? Or how are you going to figure that out? You’re not good enough for that. That takes talented, smart people.

Rowan Mangan:
And then there’s like…

Martha Beck:
What qualifications?

Rowan Mangan:
Then there’s the sort of snide ones where what you hear is, yeah, it must be nice to be able to put yourself first like that. Well, I’d never be able to do that without worrying too much about all the other people in my life and how much they need me. And I would have to say that’s one of the ones that people who identify as women are going to get hit with a lot more.

Martha Beck:
Hit hard. Your responsibilities to other… Yeah, I have that one. And I’ve heard actual examples that actually tried to dash huge way station dreams that totally changed my life is you can’t do that. No system exists to help you do that. My business, the seminars in Africa, no, there’s no system. You can’t do that. Another thing I’ve heard is…

Rowan Mangan:
Wait, wait, wait. I just want to say about the system thing. It’s fun when we are thinking about this in terms of mapping, right? Because it’s like no system exists means you are drawing your map. You’re not following what’s been chartered. There’s no system for this. Well exactly.

Martha Beck:
Yep. And then when you say that people can come back at you with, well, that’s awfully arrogant of you to think you could be the first one or the only one to do that, right? Oh, and here’s a favorite one in my family of origin. One of my brothers would always tell me, pessimists are right a lot more often than optimists. I wouldn’t have big dreams if I were you. You’re going to be wrong. And I’m like, well, if I buy 25 lottery tickets and 24 of them don’t win, but one does. Am I not still ahead? Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
A friend of mine used to always get told by her sisters something along the lines of, that’s kind of your thing though, isn’t it? Like you don’t really worry about your family as much as the rest of us do.

Martha Beck:
Yes. And then you probably are too young to remember this kind of thing. Also, you didn’t grow up in Utah, but I remember my advisors telling me in high school after all our test results came back, Martha, you’d have such a bright future if you were a boy.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh that’s lovely, isn’t it?

Martha Beck:
Oh, that’s sweet.

Rowan Mangan:
In a completely different world, you might be able to make something of yourself.

Martha Beck:
And then I got 11 pants and I wear… Yes I do.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, actually you only wear one of them, but…

Martha Beck:
No, I’m wearing them all now.

Rowan Mangan:
You’ve got 11.

Martha Beck:
I always wear 11 pairs.

Rowan Mangan:
You’re a weird, weird [inaudible 00:29:16].

Martha Beck:
That’s true.

Rowan Mangan:
So to me, these conversations always kind of show up as a tension between the expansive sort of thinking that characterizes way station dreams and the contractive stultifying thinking that the culture uses as a tool to keep us in our own lane. Convey belt factory, insert every bloody metaphor we ever use on this podcast here.

Martha Beck:
I love the word contractive. I’m not sure it’s real. Well, it is now because you said it. It’s the opposite of expansive.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, it’s better than contractual.

Martha Beck:
Ooh, that’s true. Although that’s another form of culture, a very rigid form of cultural limit. But I think you’re right. All cultures try to contract the dreams of the individual so that it was smaller and scarier way of thinking, because we can all have that in common. We can all understand. Nobody’s going to be upset. No boats will be rocked. But way station dreams, instead of asking you to be smaller and scarier, they ask you to be bigger and braver. They ask you to push past.

Rowan Mangan:
Well, none of them ask you to be smaller and scarier. I think they ask you to be smaller and scared. See, that was me.

Martha Beck:
Be smaller and really scary-like.

Rowan Mangan:
What are those little cute things that if they get wet or something, they turn into…

Martha Beck:
Gremlins?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, gremlins.

Martha Beck:
Well, I think that came out as a Freudian slip because I’m afraid of platypuses. My God, nothing equal to koala feet. I’m telling you people, Google it.

Rowan Mangan:
Marty, one of these days I’m going to tell you what shape platypus poo is and you are just going to lose your mind.

Martha Beck:
Oh my gosh. It’s going to be… Should I prepare with a dose of psychedelics or something so I can tolerate it?

Rowan Mangan:
No, no, no, no. You don’t want to be tripping when you find out this information.

Martha Beck:
Okay. So cultures tell you to be smaller and more scared, that your way of thinking should be smaller and more scared. And way station dreams require you to think bigger and more bravely.

Rowan Mangan:
Which requires courage. It really does. More and more I become aware of courage as the most important quality that we can develop as we try and bewilder ourselves.

Martha Beck:
Good point.

Rowan Mangan:
And I also think because this is a culture nature thing, it means we have to do our dreaming kind of strategically in places and with people where the voices of culture can’t reach, either alone or in nature or with those who you can trust with your dreams, which isn’t everyone. It isn’t even everyone you love.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. It’s funny the extents to which we go, I mean, one of the reasons we had this was that we were out in a place with very few people and the people that were there, this was in South Africa, in Londolozi, the people that were there had come there to think big and dream bigger dreams. And in that context it created a little microculture where I think the energy of just one brain is wonderful and people have built amazing things that just pushed individuals ahead. But for most of us finding a place that’s away from the main culture, but maybe with a few people we know are thinking expansively, that can really be a holding space to try to come up with your new way station dreams.

Rowan Mangan:
So how should we go about doing the dreaming and then actually realizing one of these way station dreams, Marty moo?

Martha Beck:
I will tell you, as I so often tell people things, in a minute.

Rowan Mangan:
So how do we come to our senses around way station dreams and the way that culture tries to dash them?

Martha Beck:
Well, as with so many of these things, people in our culture think that ideas about the future have to be conceptual, think them through. But actually we talk about how the culture tells us to come to consensus, and nature tells us to come to our senses. And it’s amazing how true that is for something as abstract seeming as future dreams, way station dreams. It really is your physical senses that help you identify them.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s so interesting. It’s like sensations that rise up.

Martha Beck:
And when people talk to me about them and they’ll like, I want to get a better job by this year. And then they’re just sitting there talking heads. And then if they can lose some of that formality and they start to talk about things that they yearn for, they start to actually gesture for it. Their voices change, their bodies start trying to describe in the air the feeling of getting what they want. It’s actually the body that’s informing the mind, and it’s by focusing on physical sensations that I actually try to help people bring a way station dream into focus.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s fascinating, isn’t it? It’s so funny because in the same way that we think things are going to be complicated. The head thinks that the how to is going to be complicated, but what we always tend to find in these conversations is that it’s just about sinking back into your body and coming to your senses in a very literal way. I think it’s also… I feel as though having the way station dream, allowing it to… Receiving it is the hardest part. In the same way that… Because you have to pick past what’s the culture and what’s me and what’s… And then the how, to realize it. Once you’ve actually clarified what your dream is, even if it takes time, I feel like the how is the easy part. That’s just logistics. That’s just back of the envelope figuring it out.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I’m having this flashback to when my third child, Ellie was seven, and she said, I need to make a certain sound mom. She was playing the piano already by then, and she said, I need a flute. And I was like, why? Does someone you know have a flute? And she said, no, I found a sound I need to make and only a flute can make it.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s so cool.

Martha Beck:
And I was like, okay, you get a flute. And I remember spending more money than I had on that flute because there is something in reality that wants to help people to their way station dreams.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s so cool because that could stand in for the whole thing. I have a sound I want to make. Isn’t that everything?

Martha Beck:
I tell you one short weird story about this. I mean, I was so broke at the time and I took Ellie to this music store to get her flute repaired on her birthday, I remember. And the flute I bought her at first was really cheap. And then there was this beautiful flute there, and she was just looking at it and she wouldn’t have asked for it. But I saw it and I said, you know what? It’s your birthday. I’m going to get you a new flute. And the teller at the music store said, it’s also my birthday. And the people behind us in line said, one of the guys said, it’s my birthday too. And another guy over in the store said, it’s my birthday too. There were four people who had birthdays that day and it was like… I could feel myself going, I don’t have the money. I don’t have the money.

No, she needs a flute to make that sound. She needs this flute. And then this weird thing happened to say yes, yes, yes. And that’s how I get all into my magical thinking parts, but happens to me all the time. And it’s so the opposite of the way the culture thinks, which is always when this, then that, right? When I do something really pragmatic and boring, then I can do something interesting. When I win the lottery I’ll travel. When I get paid…

Rowan Mangan:
Once I ate my vegetables, I can have dessert.

Martha Beck:
Yes. When I get the perfect job, I’ll feel valued and I can have enough to buy a car or whatever. It’s always first how then what. But a way station dream comes as a big what and how is just math?

Rowan Mangan:
That’s so true.

Martha Beck:
Solve for X.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. It’s sort of the Tim Ferris thing about why are we deferring all the things we want to do with our lives to this ideal of retirement. You have to eat your vegetables for 50 years and then you might go on a cruise. It’s soul-destroying. The other thing is that you were encouraging me the other day to practice what you were calling like [inaudible 00:38:13] energy or [inaudible 00:38:15] thinking. So I was like instead of coming at these sorts of things tentatively, it was like behaviors, though. It was already happening.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I was really scared I was going to find a van parked in the front yard the next day. Because when I see you get that [inaudible 00:38:31] energy, your brain goes into problem solving mode and you create realities way faster than I ever expect. It’s kind of scary when you do it and it’s because you just settle into that. It is done.

Rowan Mangan:
And I think that points to another interesting thing about this process of dreaming, this sort of dream is that, and we do get into friction sometimes with this and have done recently about the van, is that the fantasy space has to be its own realm for a certain period of time. And there’s different physics there and there’s different rules. And when we rush to… The classic is how are we going to afford it? It’s always that one.

Martha Beck:
Always.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s in some form and to all the various realities. When we rush to that, it’s a boner killer. Culture is a boner killer, frankly.

Martha Beck:
Yes, it is.

Rowan Mangan:
And that is my new Instagram handle. Culture is a boner.

Martha Beck:
I think that’s going to go very well for you, Row. I think in the lesbian community…

Rowan Mangan:
The lesbian community is a boner killer, frankly. Actually it’s not. If you look at porn, which I don’t.

Martha Beck:
Oh, it’s a way station dream we’ve had. Anyway, sometimes you start to think like that and you actually think even more expansively than I do, and I’m not a stranger to this process. But you think so expansively, I will sometimes go, whoa, back into that smaller, scarier way of thinking. And I literally… We do have friction about your vantasy life. And the other day I had to just shake it out of my hands and feet and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re in way station dream mode. It’s okay that she’s got a secret friend in her computer who’s already telling her how to drive to Costa Rica. That’s fine. She’s just in expensive way station dreaming mode and the how will emerge, and I don’t need to be afraid of it.

Rowan Mangan:
What I just heard you say, which is so interesting, is she’s just in expensive way station dreaming mode.

Martha Beck:
I just realized something. Australia is in fact pretty much an island.

Rowan Mangan:
In real time thinking about, could there be some sort of amphibious van that could drive to islands? Like a hovercraft.

Martha Beck:
The fact that you are thinking this makes me afraid that it will happen tomorrow. Because honestly, you do these things and they tend to… You make them happen. And I must say you work very, very intensely to make them happen, but also they just seem to happen to you in a pretty scary, wonderful way.

Rowan Mangan:
Here’s the thing.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Along the lines of culture as a boner killer, a list of reasons why not is the least creative thing you could ever write down on a piece of paper. Do you know what I mean? It’s so easy. It’s too easy, why not?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, why not? You could come up with… It makes me feel like, ugh. It makes me feel like a huge clot of reasons why not just landed on me.

Rowan Mangan:
Like cold porridge.

Martha Beck:
And I scoff at it. And even the thing about the reasons why not is that they are little flags sitting there to say…

Rowan Mangan:
Stay small, stay scared. Don’t get big. Don’t get brave. Because then your function as a little cog in this machine is endangered. Stay small, stay scared.

Martha Beck:
Because the arc of your life, if it follows its full trajectory, could go way outside anything we are prepared to think about.

Rowan Mangan:
And one of the ways that we know it’s nature is that it does feel a certain way in your body. And we touched on that before, but for me, when I’m on track in that way, and the dream might seem outlandish to my mind, but I have a secret little knowing, so embarrassing.

Martha Beck:
Oh boy.

Rowan Mangan:
I get this sense of calm in my body, but especially in my forearms.

Martha Beck:
Okay, that is not the body part I expected you to reference. After that lead up, it’s very embarrassing. I get a very warm feeling in my forearms and wrists.

Rowan Mangan:
Calm feeling. Very calm feeling. It’s all in the wrists, baby.

Martha Beck:
And I’ve actually seen you touch your forearms. That’s a real thing. Isn’t that interesting? Boy, I’m just digging in deeper.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s what she said.

Martha Beck:
What I typically feel is this wash of electrical sensation and it almost feels like I’m physically getting bigger like a snake ready to shed its skin. And sometimes I actually scratch my forehead as if I’m trying to get out of the skin suit I’m in.

Rowan Mangan:
Interesting.

Martha Beck:
And become a platypus. But I also find that I am actually unable to believe the dream will not come true. No matter how improbable it seems, there’s a thing in my head that is a one way ratchet. And once I’ve dreamed the dream, it can’t go back down.

Rowan Mangan:
And you know why I think that is? I reckon there’s like in my woowoo universe, I actually believe, why would we be given this dream if we weren’t supposed to be the vehicle to realize it in this reality, in this apparent reality, in this video game that we call reality? If we’re not supposed to do it, what’s the point of thinking about it?

Martha Beck:
And it’s like in this little computer game of reality, that little edge of fear, that little edge of this isn’t possible. That’s why it’s a game.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s why it has levels, dude.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. That’s why it’s so fun when you beat a level on a game because it’s the figuring out how that’s fun. And it may be quite simple once you figure it out.

Rowan Mangan:
And culture is always the big boss of the game, of each part of the game. You’re always going to be defeating a boss that’s culture and then moving to the next level.

Martha Beck:
And the big bosses, all the people around you, and you don’t have time, you don’t have money, you won’t have the energy. But that is always a feature of a way station dream, always, that you will have… You going to have to spend time and money and you don’t have it. But that’s not always true.

Rowan Mangan:
No. You don’t always have to spend something to make a way station dream come true. But you do always have to risk something. That’s being wild.

Martha Beck:
Always risk. So keep dreaming big dreams people. We will see you at the next way station and stay wild.

Rowan Mangan: 
We hope you’re enjoying Bewildered. If you’re in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word ‘WILD’ to 570-873-0144.

We’re also on Instagram. Our handle is @bewilderedpodcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show.

For more of us, Martha’s on Instagram, themarthabeck. She’s on Facebook, The Martha Beck, and she’s on Twitter, marthabeck. Her website is, MarthaBeck.com. And me, I too am on Instagram. Rowan_Mangan. I’m on Facebook as Rowan Mangan. And I’m on Twitter as RowanMangan. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI.