Dream Interpretation
So yesterday’s blog described a dream. Since there is a danger that some people (who will remain anonymous) might take it too literally, I’ve decided to offer up my own beginnings of an interpretation that will never really end. The reason I left it un-interpreted to begin with was so that any readers out there in the world could interpret it themselves, maybe even suggest interpretations (non-literal ones) that I hadn’t thought of. In fact, if you haven’t read the previous entry, do that now, then read the rest of this one.
To make sure you follow that last suggestion, I’ve decided to use this paragraph to preview some other blog entries I intend to write over the break. First, I will obviously at some point during this down time have to address the fall of the former WVU football coach to the Dark Side. The same entry will no doubt contain a copious amount of cultural analysis about the decline of Western civilization into a nihilistic capitalist consumerist orgy of greed and ego stroking. Not that I’m bitter. Also, entries on the wonders of mass rail are planned. And more poignantly, a tribute to a beloved pet that had to be put down back in October.
Oh, and news flash for anyone who missed it--I’m home in West Virginia til the 3rd.
What is it like to fall?
Life is a falling. We fall into it. We do not bring about our own being. We are created by the acts of others, out of other substances, out of the matter of dead plants and animals that have become our living mothers and fathers. Matter made of atoms formed by the death of stars. We are star dust.
We fall into a world. A world that is already here. Laws and institutions. A body structure not of our own, a very form that is unfamiliar to us as we begin having to figure out how to move this skin we’re in. And then it keeps changing anyway. All of the cells that made up your physical body ten years ago are dead. There is literally no-thing left of what you call you ten years ago.
To be born is to be given life, but it is also to be given death. A non-living thing can’t die. I’ve known this since I was five years old. That story I already blogged.
We are dust, we are star dust, we are fallen and falling. And the inevitable end awaits us at the end of our fall through space and time.
But the dream says to me what Soren Kierkegaard said…or I think is what he was trying to say, when he said that in the end life asks you only one question--have you lived in despair--or not?
The baby in the dream, the baby that is me, that is you, that is all human beings who fall into this living death. And the baby chooses life. Chooses to fall. And in the end, he says thank you. And each of us must find the hope and faith within ourselves to do the same. To see the suffering, the pain, the despair, the ouches and the heartbreaks and the inevitable crumbling of even our own bodies it took us so long to get comfortable in. It will all fall away. Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.
Is it worth it? Is it worth that falling apart, that falling away, that falling down to feel the wind against your face, the touch of another, the revelations of the world for the few brief frames our eyes glimpse and the few brief notes we hear between being dropped into this existence and passing out of it once again?
Is it worth it?
Can any of us, at the end, bloodied and broken on the floor, still smile and with faith say yes?
For now, I can only hope so.
Shouldn’t we look at our life from both ends? Shouldn’t we marvel that we get to experience anything at all? Imagine asking yourself, if you had the power of speech, newly born and fallen into the world, wouldn’t you like to EXPERIENCE? Wouldn’t you like to EXIST? Wouldn’t you be curious? Wouldn’t you want to KNOW? Yes, joy and laughter and love. But wouldn’t you want to know the rest? Sorrow and failure and heartbreak and despair? Wouldn’t you be curious? Wouldn’t you insist that your creator give you the chance? The opportunity? Wouldn’t you insist on a universe or a force or a God or random chance that didn’t always catch you? That let you fall? So that you could know the most exquisite existing of all--that of the bittersweet. The mixing of memory and desire, joy and its loss.
I’m that curious. I would have asked for this. All of this. So thank you to whatever or whoever dropped me into this existence, falling and fallen.
I know what it is to fall. And yes, today at least I can say it’s worth every single solitary moment.