Chapter 18: Bonheur total.

Active dreamers become aware that they are dreaming at least at one point within the dream. That awareness is what brings control, what lets you shape the dream in your advantage.

It had been miserable until then. The dreamer must have been conscious by then, because things dramatically changed for the better.

We were all around a bonfire, close to a lake. There were no nuisances of any kind. No mosquitoes. No insects, no ticks, no fleas, no bedbugs. No people with ill intentions. I mean, sure, there were people —and you just can't be a cynic if you establish that there aren't ill intentions in any group of people.

Yet there was no manifestation, at all, of any ill intention whatsoever, from any of the dozens of happy faces around the bonfire. I knew them all, you knew all of them, and they were the best versions of what we had ever known.

The night embraced us with its warm cloak of nescience. Naïve fools, we became one. All demophobia degraded to inexistence: the crowd isn't a crowd when you think you know all those faces giving you room to breathe. It is us. A multiplier on the feeling of belonging that you once felt in that concert of your favorite band, in that intense football game. People stopped being annoying or scary: a fabric had been laid over all of us, we had become its threads.

Someone had carved in the sand —with a very stylish typography, too cool to have been done with a simple stick— “BONHEUR TOTAL”.

Total happiness.

I agreed.

In a normal state of mind, I would just classify that person as delusionally positive, lacking some standards about the degree of happiness that one could aspire to embrace. Plus, somewhat prétentieux or prétentieuse —that, if his or her mother language wasn't French. Even this last assumption could be wrong: one should be able to show interest in a language and practice it without others claiming pretentiousness —at least without further information about the person.

Agreeing with the statement of total happiness wiped all the eagerness to criticize the potential flaws of the individuals surrounding me.

Anxiety had left us. After so many years, the relief of having no anxiety felt strange. Really strange.

The release was immense.

A loop had been broken: happiness had killed the negativity that always chose the most cheerless explanation for an event or a behavior, an explanation often shielding the individual to any potential happiness threatening to disrupt the loop of pessimism. An egoistic loop; very good at its self-preservation, decent at portraying reality, and terrible for the individual.

Broken free, but for how long?

Who cares. I proceeded to frolic in the community.