What's the first rule of improv?
San Francisco 2031
It was dawn just before Sunrise on a Friday. [4] Hope tentatively opened the door to the pastel-painted Victorian row house. She had arrived early for her appointment. It was her first therapy session since being discharged from rehab. [5]
-What brings you here?
A short question, an impossibly long answer, Hope sat in crestfallen silence, unable to give an immediate response as she anxiously struggled to make eye contact with the kind-faced woman who sat with the semblance of a smile across from her. She labored while organizing the memories swirling in her head; some real, others confabulations that she had unknowingly created to dull her grief.
Her heart started racing and she couldn’t understand why, or what she was feeling. She had poor interoception.
-The pain, it won’t stop. It follows me everywhere I go. And it feels like I’ve lost time and I don’t think there’s much left to go. And there’s this void that… no matter what I do, it’s always there; I’m always alone even when I’m with others.
That’s the first time she had ever articulated those thoughts into words. It had taken years.
-This will take time, but eventually you’ll learn to accept what’s happened. You’ll let go.
-Just let go.
-What?
-Seriously, let go of my hand. I don’t want everyone thinking we’re that couple in the corner making out, ignoring everyone else. [6] [7]
This was week two of them dating. It was a snowy Friday night in early December when Hope made her public debut with him. I’m not even going to say his name, he doesn’t deserve any more public recognition than he’s already received. I’ll just refer to him as him.
They were standing outside the front door of a mutual friend’s house who was hosting a Christmas party.
The words devastated Hope.
She didn't want to be ‘that’ kind of couple either, but what’s wrong with walking through the front door holding her new boyfriend’s hand to greet the rest of their friends?
-Just let go!
Suspended three-stories above the stage just below the rafters in a bed now tilting downstage toward the atrium’s dated reclining chairs, it was the final dress rehearsal for Hope’s debut in her high school’s production of Sleeping Beauty. [8] This was years ago (I wasn’t even around yet) and it was the first time Hope would perform the acrobatic act in front of the full cast, ensemble, and small audience composed primarily of family members and close friends. She had practiced individually a half dozen times before with the director and stage crew, but still her nerves naturally got the best of her in face of so many more.
-Seriously, LET GO. JUST LET GO, HOPE!
They were at the ballet’s most pivotal moment at the end of Act II when the Prince comes along to awaken Sleeping Beauty with a kiss and the director was yelling at Hope. The idea was that the bed would tilt forward and Sleeping Beauty would fly out over the audience momentarily before descending onto the main stage to greet her new love.
Hope, unfortunately, had no say in this choreography and the director never bothered to ask whether heights bothered her.
They did.
Clinging to the top two corners of the bed like a cat attempting to escape from the edges of a tub while being bathed, Hope was terrified to take the plunge as the bed was near vertically inclined by this point and the blankets and pillows had already fallen off.
Her mother began cheering from the back of the hall and the rest of the cast and crew followed, erupting into applause as well. The spotlight was blinding. Hope couldn’t actually see anyone. She opened her eyes to a black abyss.
-Louder!
-Louder!
The conductor beckoned the timpanist to keep going, harder, faster, chaotically waving his baton all around like a sorcerer frenetically casting a spell. Everyone froze watching the moment awkwardly wane on.
-Why the rush? Why the rush?
She kept asking herself breathlessly, afraid of what would happen when she let go.
BOOM
BOOM
BOOM
BOMB
-HOPE, GO! GO! We need to leave!
She was still in bed and I began shaking her to wake up. Unknowingly, she was responding to the explosions’ external stimuli in a bout of parasomnias.
That was when the first bombs landed, just as the sun arose.
At last, Hope awakened.
***
A core challenge in navigating the social world, is how to negotiate differences of perception, attitude, and understanding.
Whether the context entails romantic couples, bosses and employees, or heads of state brokering multi-lateral decisions, everyone experiences instances in which different actors maintain divergent perspectives despite exposure to the same information…
We propose that an equally important tributary feeding the river of misunderstanding is the illusion of information adequacy— people tacitly assume that they have adequate information to understand a situation and make decisions accordingly. Yet, individuals often have no way of knowing what they don’t know. [9]
***
Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency. [10]