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Change without Destruction
Jul. 9th, 2005 03:27 pmI overslept this morning because of a very involved dream I was having. I dreamt that this summer, right here in the USA, the electricity went out. It just ... died. The phones, lights, heating, cooling, and stoves didn´t work - and we did not know what was happening in the rest of the country, or even the rest of Oregon. At the time, I was with some coworkers, friends and family at a summertime retreat up in the mountains. For a few days it was idyllic, like some Merchant Ivory production, but after about a week we started to worry: what were we going to eat when the weather turned cold? How were were going to stay warm? Who among us had any knowledge of these things? Suddenly distance was a crucial factor. Getting from Point A to Point B took hours, not minutes. We were all rather reluctant to leave the retreat center, buy at the end of the dream, we were on the road, driving a vehicle down the deserted highway, knowing we would run out of gas eventually and have to walk the rest of the way to .... ? We left the relative safety of the countryside for a certain but unknown chaos in the more populated places. I was afraid on the one hand, but as we looked out the window at the mountains and hillsides, one thought dominated our minds: we are back at the beginning.
It was a strange dream - most of my vivid dreams in the past have had me as the central character, trying to rescue or protect everyone else. This time I was just one of the people, finding out when they found out. I take this as a sign of a healthy emotional progress. Maybe I feel less blame, less responsibility for everyone - so long as I can remember, I have always felt guilty. Not about anything in particular. Guilt lies at the foundation of my personality. I feel as if I owe the world something beyond what I can give it, and sometimes this is paralyzing.
The dream itself is pretty easy to interpret: influenced by seeing War of the Worlds last week, when cars all died and electricity went out, I have some anxiety and mixed feelings about Opus, which is a spiritual retreat for UU young adults that takes place next month in a rustic camp in Iowa. I am one of the two Co-Deans. Also, I was thinking yesterday about the Kyoto Treaty and Bush´s refusal to sign it, and I am without a car for a while.
Also, I often struggle with feelings of wanting to see the whole world reborn. I think it's mostly curiosity. A part of me actually hoped something catastrophic would happen on Y2K, just so that I could be a witness to something unimaginably different. I am troubled by these thoughts because I know they are not unlike the fanatic Apostolic who wants to usher in the Apocalypse or the neo-Nazi praying for her Race War. Maybe it is just the teachings of my former religion transferred onto secular possibilities. And a little bit of my death drive, reflected onto the whole world, I guess. But I need to learn to see radical change as being possible through a consistent series of small actions; I have to have faith that revolutionary change can occur without massive destruction. I need to have faith in this.
It was a strange dream - most of my vivid dreams in the past have had me as the central character, trying to rescue or protect everyone else. This time I was just one of the people, finding out when they found out. I take this as a sign of a healthy emotional progress. Maybe I feel less blame, less responsibility for everyone - so long as I can remember, I have always felt guilty. Not about anything in particular. Guilt lies at the foundation of my personality. I feel as if I owe the world something beyond what I can give it, and sometimes this is paralyzing.
The dream itself is pretty easy to interpret: influenced by seeing War of the Worlds last week, when cars all died and electricity went out, I have some anxiety and mixed feelings about Opus, which is a spiritual retreat for UU young adults that takes place next month in a rustic camp in Iowa. I am one of the two Co-Deans. Also, I was thinking yesterday about the Kyoto Treaty and Bush´s refusal to sign it, and I am without a car for a while.
Also, I often struggle with feelings of wanting to see the whole world reborn. I think it's mostly curiosity. A part of me actually hoped something catastrophic would happen on Y2K, just so that I could be a witness to something unimaginably different. I am troubled by these thoughts because I know they are not unlike the fanatic Apostolic who wants to usher in the Apocalypse or the neo-Nazi praying for her Race War. Maybe it is just the teachings of my former religion transferred onto secular possibilities. And a little bit of my death drive, reflected onto the whole world, I guess. But I need to learn to see radical change as being possible through a consistent series of small actions; I have to have faith that revolutionary change can occur without massive destruction. I need to have faith in this.
