My dreams taunt my contentment. It’s infuriating.

I’m my happiest ever, living a life of love, doing what I feel born to, fulfilled by family and friends, cared for, cared about. Awake I’m rinsed of regret, envy, misdirected desires, leading a life that feels, if not saintly, as close as I’ll get. Would I trade this life for another? Never! Most of the folks I once envied were dead by my age!

A sweet report, right? I am grateful – relaxed – serene… when awake – and Reason repeats its learnings from a teleprompter. Then my dreams – mischievously – counterprogram – carrying me back to disgusting outgrown longings. I yearn to be rich as Croesus, famous as (fill in the blank), sexy as (don’t go there). I am “working a room”, crammed with monied folks I’m hoping to tempt; kvelling over a P and L (which proves, alas, overstated)…

You get the picture. I am again all the falsities and ferocities I have learned over seventy-four years to loathe: materialist, nihilist, skeptic, as bad as you-know-who, maybe worse, because I know better: a recovered addict panting for his old fix.

I hate this dream movie – and view it greedily. This, I tell myself, is the real me, deep down, not the mezzotinted oldster on his metaphoric porch. The paragon I present is a fraud, my dreams snicker. My frantic imagination has contrived this pretty picture of my latter years but it’s hooey. The truth will out!

I wake shaken. I’ve hated this movie – spiritual S and M. Its verdict is false, calumnious, unfair: maybe I’ll sue. Is a soul not permitted to mature – from rampant bewilderment to sensible serenity? To hell with that nonsense!

But now Reason’s yanking the reins of my runaway psyche. What might I learn from this eruption? Yes, I can refute my dream’s charges, win an innocent verdict from my empaneled jury, “walk free.” But (to coin a phrase) where there’s smoke there’s fire or, as Lear grouses, “Nothing comes from nothing.”

Imagination defies tranquility: that is the human curse – and blessing. Henry, my canine companion, is tranquil, cheerful (unless forced to take a pill – sorry, pup), just now asleep beside me, deeply at ease. He dreams too, I’m guessing, but his dreams delight, they do not recriminate, because he knows one time only – now – so does not compare. He is not derided by roads not taken or chances foregone. He likes Jane and me best because we’re his one and only, he can conceive no others, and yes, the grandkids, who are more amusing, will return – or not – no use sweating it. His mental life, while attentive and responsive – is not plagued by alternatives. No what-ifs. No yesterdays or tomorrows. Only here and now.

We humans are a multiplicity of possibilities. The keener our imagination, the more versions of our self we proliferate. Our discontent has made us creators, inventors, maniacs. Only the stupid are satisfied.

Shakespeare’s second Richard wrestles this wrenching restlessness in his final speech, words I revert to as a sort of rosary:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThus play I in one person many people,And none contented: sometimes am I king;Then treasons make me wish myself a beggar,And so I am: then crushing penuryPersuades me I was better when a king;Then am I king'd again… but whate'er I be,Nor I nor any man that but man isWith nothing shall be pleased, till he be easedWith being nothing.

“Pleased with being nothing”: So Shakespeare counseled and consoled himself – and kept writing, his whole glorious career ahead. For us humans, to live is to grieve.