"I want to sleep." 
Me too. But what would you do if money weren't an object? 
"Sleep." 
Then what? 
"Sleep more." 
I get it. We all love to sleep. But you'd get bored. I mean, what would you say about someone who is asleep and never wakes up? 
"They're dead..." 
"...or comatose." 
Right. Dead or comatose. Is that what you want to be? Of course not. What I think you really want is a life that doesn't drain you to the point where all you want to do is sleep. You say "I'd only sleep," but I'm hearing: I want a life where I can sleep when I'm tired and have a reason to want to be awake when I'm not.

---

If you know me, you know I love Alan Watts. I could listen to recordings of his lectures for hours. I have. Sometimes, instead of music, I fall asleep listening to him. He was my gateway drug to a more mindful existence. He is my moment of Zen. My guru, my ObiwanYodaZenMasterJediBuddha

In one of my favorite moments, he discusses vocational training with students. “What would you do if money were no object?” he asks.

We are programmed through life to want certain things. To aim for certain goals. Be successful, make money, look good, smell good, feel good. But what is good? I see the ghost of Robert Pirsig’s Phaedrus wafting in the distance.

When you get down to it, you realize that success, money, the good life — these are all just words. They are like dollars themselves. A dollar is just a piece of paper. Half a million of those pieces of paper makes a nice pile, but a house is about half a million dollars worth of real estate. You can live in it. You can keep all your stuff in it. Seems to be worth more than a large pile of paper.

Words like success, money, the good life all sound good, but they’re fingers pointing at the moon. Watts makes the analogy of going to a grocery store, regretting spending a hundred dollars, and missing the fact that you now have real wealth in the form of groceries.

Having taught high school for 18 years, I’ve learned that the American education system does a fair job inculcating these words as signifiers. The deficiency lies in teaching what they actually mean. Ask any 12th grader in America what success, money, the good life looks like and they’ll give you the connotation, the culturally acceptable response. What many won’t tell you is what those words mean in their own lives.

---

So I ask my students: what would you do, if you didn’t have to do anything?

Mister, I would SLEEP!
SMOKE SOME WEED!
EASY! You know I can report you, right?
Chill, Mister, just playing…
I’d watch TV!
I’d play X-Box!
Bro, you’re whack — PS5 ALL DAY!
Whatever

And for the first few years, I would hit them back with the traditional teacher responses: Okay! Let’s be serious! That’s no way to live! Don’t you want to do something with your life?

Tone deaf. What would Tommy have wanted to hear in 1994? They’ve been hearing well-meaning dudes like me say that to them their whole lives. It probably sounds as empty as it feels saying it.

I get it. We all want to sleep. Isn’t that strange? It’s the one thing we are completely unaware of, but we long for it. Why do we long for those hours when time stops, nothing seems to happen, it’s over before it begins? But if you could sleep all the time — would you really be alive?

Well Mister, you could dream...
Yes. But is that really living?
I've had some good dreams... and I have had some nightmares.
Right. Life can be like a good dream too. Or a nightmare. But look at all the amazing things you can do. Some of you write, are artists, dancers, friends, performers, mathematicians, scholars, athletes. You are all creators building beautiful lives — and you do all of this while you're awake.
I don't think you want to sleep your life away. I think you want a life where you can sleep when you're tired and live when you're awake. I think you want a life you don't want to escape from. I think you want a life you are free to create....

...Your magnum opus.