Dreaming

21

I always feel a sense of loss when I wake up and can still feel the vestiges of a dream slipping away, it’s like delicate cobwebs being brushed off. You can close your eyes tight and try, but it always seems that the harder you try to recall the details, the more they dissipate into the fog.

What was I dreaming? Was it a memory? A wish? A forgotten childhood event?

Sometimes I will be left with an emotion – sadness, happiness – but I don’t know why I feel what I feel because I can’t remember the dream.

I’ve often wondered why I can remember some dreams and not others.

Life’s like that too though, isn’t it?

We all had dreams as children. Some dreams came true, some we forgot, some we realized just weren’t feasible and we let them go and moved on. We grew up. In some cases that was a major loss and we should revisit those dreams to see if we can find our inner child again, recover our wonder at the amazing world around us.

And sometimes, if we look at our lives, we realize that what we have forgotten to appreciate all that is in our life, and that our lives may be someone else’s dream.

Our lives are made up of journeys – emotional, physical – life is always a struggle at some level. And yet so many can only focus on the proverbial brass ring – the prize, destination, the thing that feeds their personal desire – I want that thing/life/experience.

How much more could we do to help others, others who really “need” help, if we only tried?

When Mom died, I took over her Foster Child in Paraguay. Liz is 13 years old and wishes that her school had computers as she is very interested in them, her letters are all handwritten.

It’s embarrassing to be a North American sometimes. The waste, the excess, the frivolous things that make us happy. The desire for more, better, bigger, faster. When I read about/see the businesses that spring up to feed our self centred drives for emotional and psychological gluttony. . . it’s humbling to remember that we are the few who can afford the luxuries that we have, and that we should spend more time appreciating what we do have and less time feeling sorry for ourselves because our selfishness drives us to want what we don’t have instead.

I had a tough time writing to Liz the first time. I didn’t know if it was appropriate to tell her that her sponsor, my mother, had died. Eventually I realized that this bit of information was a leveller or sorts. I can imagine that my life must be a dream to that little girl. Education, a high paying job, the luxury to do what I want and go where I please, freedom from fear of civil strife.

What are Liz’s dreams? I bet they are much simpler than ours. And more complicated too. Is she like this flower? Taking root in a hostile environment, and stretching for the sun and the stars?

I hadn’t realized it until I reached the end of this post, but today marks the 50th anniversary of a Dream speech. Martin Luther King had a wonderful dream that touched the world and helped many in the last 50 years – Revisiting Martin Luther King’s Dream Speech

113 photos in 2013: #102 – Pink