What If? REBECA FELIX

 

Our What If? essay series encourages you to embark on philosophical adventures more frequently and motivates you to regularly push past the boundaries of conventional thought. To read previous submissions, click here.

This open-ended thought experiment is participatory and accessible to everyone.

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How to participate in the What If project

 

REBECA FELIX is a poet and baker. She lives in a yellow house in Mammoth Lakes, California.

 

What if there were an extra, unawake hour hidden in each day? A 25th hour?

What if people could access it through dreams and daydreams alike? What if they could use little bits of the hour throughout the day? A calming moment in the park here, a dip in a pool there? What if you threw a tea party for all of your closest friends at the stroke of midnight and used the whole hour at once? Would you have to coordinate with friends to overlap your hours? Or would each individual consciousness be available in the dream stream at any time, ready to receive an invitation? What if you could meet new people in your extra hour? Could you meet again in your regularly allotted 24 hours? Or would you become friends only in your hidden hour? Can you fall in love there? Can you feel your 25th hour in your waking life like a coin in your pocket?

What if it were effortless for some people? What if that is what makes the child with the wandering attention span in a second grade class seem strange? What if he were simply using little sips of his extra hour, creating new dinosaurs or splashing in the puddles behind his grandmother’s house or telling you how nice he thinks it is to say the word purple?

What if you didn’t have to use your hour each day? What if they rolled over like cell phone minutes? What if you had 15.21 extra dream days each year saved up to do whatever you wanted? What if you could travel anywhere, try any food?

What if there were no physical limitations? What if there were no illnesses or allergies in the 25th hour and people could live freely and limitlessly there? What if a woman with cystic fibrosis could breathe easily and a deaf child could hear? What if those who have passed could join us there? Our idols or relatives? What if you could invite David Foster Wallace to coffee and talk to him about drugs and writing? What if you could invite your late grandfather to your 25th hour and have him teach you to build a sailboat?

What if you took cello lessons in your 25th hour and suddenly played amazing cello in your waking life? What if you used it to be alone? To read that book you’ve been too busy for or try watercolors for the first time since 5th grade art class? What if you made it a sacred window of time restricted from social media and technology? What if you used it for transcendental meditation and sat on a fluffy floor pillow and broke all rules of time and space and made an extra extra hour? What if you had the most valued, transformative conversations and moments of your life in this dream state?

What if you stopped what you were doing and did it now?

 

R.F. 2016