For 10 years, back in the 80’s I kept dream journals. It was during my most profound phase of self-discovery. I had read about lucid dreaming and problem solving in your sleep, and decided I wanted to learn how to do it all.
One of the dreams I can recall as if I had it yesterday.
I was high atop a mountain in Hawaii. The weather was perfect, breezy and fresh. A group of native women were standing on either side of a long wooden table, weaving straw baskets. A tall, muscular, impressive-looking Hawaii man, with a radiant smile, stood next to them. Down below, I could see traffic scurrying along on the street like so many ants. Busy.
As I walked up to the big Hawaiin, his smile was so brilliant, it made me catch my breath. It was so peaceful here, on top of the mountains, with the natives, weaving baskets. That’s all there was: this place, the Hawaiins in their colorful grab, the straw baskets, the fresh air, the peacefulness.
“When am I ever going to get here,” I asked him pleadingly.
He just smiled back at me, and said, “Don’t worry. You will someday.”
I awoke from that dream feeling so wonderful, even though I knew I didn’t completely understand it. Somehow, I knew he was right. I trusted that I would “get there someday.”
Tonight, more than 15 years later, the answer came to me.
I was lying in bed, thinking back over my day, preparing mentally for sleep. I thought about the new part-time job I had taken a few months back, thanks to the current economic conditions. It was an interesting place. Management mostly ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. “Oh, the sky is falling. The sky is falling. What shall we do??”
The workers constantly complained about everything that management did or said, even though they all had jobs in the midst of the worst jobless rate since the Great Depression.
I had a new “boss,” twenty years my junior, who was constantly trying to give me ‘sales tips’ on ways I could improve my “sales game,” even though I’d been selling since he was in diapers. And his style of selling was the “hard-core-razzle-dazzle-shell-game” and I only did relationship selling, and did unto others as I would they do unto me.
I was mulling it all over, the way one does right before falling asleep, when suddenly I realized that none of the afore-mentioned situations bothered me one iota. And I knew, in the core of my being, that I had, in fact, “gotten there.” I had made it to the top of the mountain.
So here I am, up in the middle of the night, writing this down, for anyone who will read or hear it.
“Why?” you might ask.
I’m not sure. Maybe I think the big Hawaiin would be proud.