An Example in a Dream

This morning I had a dream that is a parable of my current life decisions.

It was set in a basement restaurant somewhere; I sat at a small table just like the dozen other customers present at the time. The owner of the establishment was walking to each table chatting, observing and doing the owner thing, but he also was explaining to the patrons how to do something with the food at their table. It was almost as if it was a cooking class of some sort, just one where we all worked on different things.

Though I don't remember leaving the restaurant, I distinctly felt as if this tutelage was not a singular instance but, rather, a recurring theme. It was a class--one that spanned the course of a couple days. A few people joined mid-way and a couple others left without finishing. But the atmosphere stayed the same, and we slowly were learning.

At one point, we were asked to do something. I feel as if it were some type of group project or test, a proof of our understanding. We strained under the pressure of the task. No one knew how were were going to accomplish it, and our despair started to show. The owner, in his casual, passive way, questioned our planning and strategy. Sure the project was big, but aren't big things composed of small parts? See here: that decorative peeling you learned with the garnish she perfected, covered with the drizzle that the couple over there have been working on all this time... Aha!

The lights came on in our heads and we completed our project successfully. It was a beautifully ornate thing; our instructor beamed with satisfaction, and we celebrated our accomplishment, pushing our little tables together into a makeshift dinner spread.

At this point, the owner disappeared; I felt as if he was, for our purposes, gone. As we waited for the celebratory food, my classmates talked about how he must have been a genius to teach us to make something so fantastic.

"He didn't give us a genius idea," the guy sitting across from me countered. "He just helped us see the genius ideas we each already had."

I agreed. I agreed with all my heart, and I knew that he understood the potential of humanity in a way similar to mine. Yet as he said it, our colleagues turned away from their success and looked back at themselves. Limited by their own self-perception and self-doubt, we could literally watch as they visibly sank from the elevated level they experienced back to the confused, despairing, leaderless creatures they were before the class.

I turned my head away; I think I wanted to cry, but I could not. I just knew I couldn't bear to look at them anymore, nor would I look at them and forget the new horizon I had just realized. The guy across from me noticed my actions and said something, but I was drifting out of slumber at this point and cannot remember what he said.

The dream encapsulated my feelings these days. In many ways, my move from a more default method of working and living to an independent (and, in my opinion, more traditional) style is the equivalent of me turning my head away in the dream. I refuse to accept the reality; I believe with all my heart only in the potential. If the only way to push toward that new horizon is to turn my back, even on those who have greater potential than I possess, so be it.

I do not live to be; I am here to live (writing that, I realize it sounds better when translated into just about every other language I can think of). I hope that today, and every day, I might be able to inspire one or two as the instructor did in my dream.