Meditations

It had always been clearer to me than the average person that this realm is passing. Many things that grabbed people’s attention or caused them to worry or lose sleep have just never seemed important to me. My mum always told me that among all the children in the neighborhood, I was last to start walking, that I just did not see what all the fuss was about. She said it got so bad that after a while all my friends who were walkers began to crawl again with me. I never forget that story because it really spoke to me about the sort of person I was born to be.

I am 26 now, thankfully walking and one thing that I have which I suspect many of my friends don’t have is the manner and quality of my dreams of the night. Being someone who seriously values the sweetness of a cool, dark, seamless 8-hour-sleep, it really stick in my consciousness throughout the day when I have had a nightmare. And they can be very real, very graphic, at times, ineffably otherworldly. Many times they come when I’m making wrong choices and boy, those can be super-terrifying. But I usually recover after a day or two of self-reflection and they have never made me cry. No, it’s the good dreams that leave me weeping.

My good dreams are not usually ineffable and they come as real, even realer, than reality. That is often what leaves me utterly heartbroken when I wake up. They show me glimpses of another world, a perfect world. Not heaven but a new world with similar features to this one, only perfect. The last one I had which was this evening had a new song in it. A song I was singing with all of my heart at the top of my voice in a congregation. I was singing it like that was what I was made to do. I would have recorded the tune on my phone but then it didn’t feel right to do that, as that was not why I was singing it in the dream. Holding on to it would, in some sense, signify that it was in fact a fleeting experience, that dream. I don’t believe this is so. The world I woke up to was the one less real.

When I woke up, I did not weep, not this time. Maybe because I’ve had dreams of that sort before or maybe because, it was clearly a message that I had needed for a couple of days now. A message about the pointlessness of running in this world, seeking to be something in this place more than the place which is and will ever be.

I think a lot about aging and our ability to do so. Maybe because I’ve lived with old people much of my life but it is never lost on me the manner of lives they are left with after all the running. All that running to be brought down to your knees again. Your skin wrinkling like old leaves right before your eyes, your joints giving way beneath your weight, your muscles atrophying. They must see themselves as ghosts. What would be my own consolation when my beloved hair looses lustre? Would it not be that world I had so often caught a glimpse of? Walking, being someone of influence, getting married, owning a mansion, how much would I have to worry for these? How much would I have to give up? And would it be worth it? Would I be alright with myself when my back falls to a bow?

There are no good dreams because we wake up. We get out of the ether again, back to the jarring cacophony of crooked existence. Pain, disease and aging, wickedness and lies. Maybe I can find myself a source of joy in living a life that is favoured with the perspective of transcendence. I don’t think I want to give this up for anything in this world. I don’t much care about getting married if doing so will pull me down from that sorrowful joy. I don’t need worldly possessions if I can but make something similar to these dreams of the world I wake to. Perhaps this might be my consolation.

Jesus said to that man, ‘Be wary and constant guard against besetting greed because a man’s life is not in the abundance of his possessions.’ Maybe I’m being unreasonable but I think Jesus was pretty unreasonable too. So what is to be my life? I have only begun it. What must I count worth the time I have been given? Why should I age and atrophy? Why not just leave when the smile is bright and the blood is warm? Why should the dream-weaver keep waking me up? Well, if this is but a mock existence and another realm awaits, then I will live in hope. Constant hope. I will spend all my days in hope. Whether I marry or not, whether I have kids of my own or not, whether I make a celebrated legacy of it all or not, this will be my hope. The world He has waiting for me. And between now and then, I will use it as he used his. ‘Greater love has no one than this: to lay down his life for his friends.’ I will not expect aught for myself for what indeed is my life? Maybe that will make waking up more palatable. Maybe that will make aging worth it. Maybe.