I was hypnotized once. Many years ago. Not by one of those stage-performer hypnotists like the ones you see on TV, but by an actual licensed hypnotist — or at least that’s what she said she was. (Is there even such a thing as a hypnosis license, and how do you get one?)
I closed my eyes.
Count down from ten, she said in Spanish. Imagine you are inside a house. You are walking down a long hallway. At first, it’s bright. But it gets darker and darker as you walk deeper into the house. At the end of the hall, there is a light. Walk toward it. Count your steps with me.
Uno, dos, tres, cuatro…
The feeling of my back in the chair faded from my awareness. My feet weren’t on the ground. The headache I had that morning was gone. My body was nowhere. And my mind was in a dream without sleep — somewhere in a hallway, in this “house” I was imagining.
…cinco, seis, siete…
I walked toward the light.
… ocho, nueve, diez.
When you reach the end of the hall, turn to your right, she said. Look down. Notice there is a staircase going into a basement. Walk down ten steps with me.
Uno, dos, tres… she counted again. The stairs take a sharp turn now. Look to your left. Walk down five steps until you reach a door.
I took one step down, and then another, and another.
… cuatro, cinco.
The doorknob was sparkling from the light on the wall behind me. I reached out and touched it, holding its coldness in my palm for a moment.
This feels too real, I thought to myself. My voice echoed through the gray area between sleep and wake.
Abre la puerta, she said. Open the door. There is a child sitting in the room, by himself. The child is you and he is afraid. Go sit with him. I will leave you now. Talk to the boy. Comfort him. Give him advice.
I sat in front of the child, in the imaginary room, in the imaginary house. He looked up at me. He really was me — the blonde bowl cut, his pale and reddish cheeks, his light brown eyes. I think he was wearing a red and white striped shirt and blue shorts. I couldn’t tell. There wasn’t much light in the room. I couldn’t even see the walls. Maybe there were no walls. We were just sitting on the floor, suspended in space.
I don’t remember what I said to the mini-me — only how intense and real the experience felt. It was a lot for a fifteen year old to process. Yes, I was fifteen when this happened. What advice could teenage-me possibly have given child-me? I like to think I helped the kid somehow. But who knows.
I emerged from the lucid dream with a knot in my throat. I wasn’t the only one — and I wasn’t the only one being hypnotized either. Someone’s dad on my childhood soccer team thought it’d be a good idea if all the players saw a sports psychologist. We needed to focus better during games, he said. But he couldn’t find a psychologist to help us, so he found the next best thing. He knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a Colombian hypnotist.
She met us all one Sunday morning before our state tournament. She stood in front of the room like a priest, luring us into a trance all at once. Mass hypnosis. Each of us went into our own imagined rooms with our child selves. I don’t know if the hypnotist helped us win games but the experience was cathartic as hell. My teammates awoke in tears — more likely to go skip through a meadow of daisies than battle another group of fifteen year olds on the soccer field.
The hypnosis wasn’t the strangest thing that happened to me while I was on that team. It was just another Sunday really. I cataloged the whole experience under the “WTF folder” in the “Soccer Team” cabinet. That folder was bursting at the seams.
Every now and then, I rediscover that folder. The hypnosis story always stands out. I’ve tried many times to find that dark room in that house — to find my child self. Fifteen-year-old me probably gave the boy the winning lotto numbers or told him something trivial about how to be a better soccer player. Maybe, in some other dimension, there is a version of me that won the lottery and scored in the World Cup. But I’m older and wiser now. I know there’s healing to be had. And yet I’ve never been able to find my child self again. If only I had asked for the hypnotist's business card.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I would tell the kid if I ever do find a way to reach him again — about what I would tell my younger brothers, my future children, and anyone who cares what a 27-year-old writer has to say. I’ve learned so much in a quarter century on Earth. How could I summarize it in one conversation? The answer hit me while I was in the shower last wednesday — the shower, where the best ideas unfold.
Turns out the most important idea I would share with my child self — the idea that pervades every article I’ve written on this blog — isn’t even my own. If I were sitting in that dark room, at the end of that long hallway, in that house suspended in imaginary space, talking to my child self, I would impart the Socratic maxim: Know thyself.
Maybe you think that’s an overused platitude. But to me, it’s the only real way to change the world.
Here’s what I would tell the kid:
At times, the world around you will be a shitstorm. There will be a pandemic. There will be riots. There will be wars. Your friends and relatives will attach themselves to political ideas, to their careers, to anything that distracts them from their own individuality. Don’t follow them by looking outside of yourself for answers, or validation, or relief from uncertainty and doubt and fear.
The world around you can also be a beautiful place, and you can make it so with one decision: Look within. See that your soul is a seed waiting to be planted. Find fertile ground, and water it daily. Study yourself. Why do you feel the way you do? Why do you do the things you do, again and again? Learn to discern. Find out what feeds your soul and what pains it. Notice the parts of your life that are like weeds eating away at fertile soil. Learn how to cut them. Listen to your dreams, and learn to speak the language of your subconscious. Tend to your inner garden religiously. And let whatever grows there spill out into the world, like flowering vines slowly draping over a balcony, stretching, and blooming into the noisy streets below.
You can change the world if you choose to. Just know that the whole world is within you. Start by improving yourself, and remember this Talmudic proverb: “He who saves one man, saves the world entire.” The first person you must save is you. See the world in you and everyone you meet. Recognize yourself in them. They are you.
Mine the world for wisdom and beauty. Read books and poetry and listen to sad music. Create what only you can create. Don’t attach yourself too seriously to anything that happens around you. Learn to laugh at life’s absurdities. No doubt, you will feel pain and sorrow. Just remember, every storm brings water for your inner garden. Suffering is a part of this life, but this life is only a dream — a Rumspringa for when you return to your source … to the creator. Arrive at the end knowing you did everything to prepare your soul for what comes next. Look within. Look within. The only way to change the world is to look within.
That’s what I would tell my inner child — that and “always ask for the hypnotist’s business card.”