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The Bad Dream

The Bad Dream

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The Bad Dream

“Can you hear me now?” the voice said over the line when I picked up the telephone.

“Yes,” I responded at once. “Good…” Then the robo-call proceeded to pitch me.

I hate robo-calls. I mean, like white-hot heat hate.

But, that is nothing in comparison with my mood after having a bad dream. Especially one that occurs just before I awaken under the morning dawning with the feeling that my self esteem was just body slammed after exiting the “Dark of the Dungeon Keep of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep,” as the poet, Sidney Lanier once penned.

And the other morning, I had a doozy of a downerdream.

So, at once, not wishing to be a petulant child about it, I shook off the lie that the unconscious vision had imprinted on my mind as truth.

For, again, as Lanier also observed, “The blackest night could bring up brighter news.”

And I realized it.

Because there are two things I do know and these two things helped me to dispel to lie of the bad dream.

Three things, probably.

For significant ideas always come in threes, don't they? Like a Baptist sermon. But, I'm getting on and, most likely, forgot what the third point was.

And we could all die of apathy waiting for it. Maybe I'll recall it by the end of this writing? Stranger things have happened- only, I can't remember them either.

Oh, well… so, we're stuck with two things: One-Know Yourself, and Two-Take Care of Your Own Business.

Believe me, they are like two peas in the same pod.

But, knowing yourself is not in the personal agenda of the young.

It is their undoing.

They are all caught up in the rat race. Comparing what they've caught, whether it be money or power or fame. They are sizing up their catch to see “Who's bass is biggest.”

And there's some big basses out there.

So much for alliteration.

Only, the young have no confidence in themselves, because their story is not near completed and is written in sand. The Wind of Destiny blows where it will in their world and rewrites their lives daily — the world where they think they needn't save and blow thousands for worthless college degrees, or do not plan by taking minimal jobs instead of waiting all their existence for someone to offer them the CEO spot at Microsoft or GM along with the key to the executive washroom, or not be careful by texting while driving and end up in a body cast, or not treat people decently when everyone knows you meet the same people coming down as when you went up the food chain.

Duh?

I can honestly say that the most arrogant people who I have encountered have all been young. That is because the more mature have scrapped their agendas in favor of personal solace. However, the youngit's like they taught us in the psychology class I took once: Insecurity needs overcompensation to seek a level comfort zone.

And the more mature among us?

They have their own problems.

Mainly in the realm of taking care of their own business.

For the world has so much to offer… too much in point of fact. And so many of our seniors feel like they have to be at every grandchild's ball game, as well as personally compete at work by outdoing the youngsters coming up in the company in order to appear relevant. They do too much, they think too much, they try too hard, they run until they fall, they stretch until they strain, they work until they are exhausted.

And then they have to deal with the depression of realizing that they can't do what they used to do and also tend to summarize their own lives only by what they didn't accomplish in it. I heard a great thing the other day about this very subject.

It was a statement made by a person stricken with a handicap.

“It's not about what I CAN'T do. It's about what I CAN do.”

And that was because the things that person could not do would fill encyclopedias and the things that individual could do were just a few.

Only, man!

That struck me when I heard it.

I found myself gasping for air, because it hit me so hard.

The truth in that gem of a statement.

What if we all tended to our own business like we would tend a garden, and we knew ourselves and respected ourselves as we should?

And that bad dream I had? I forgot it.

Maybe because I take care of my own business, or because I know myself.

But then, it could be because I just can't remember squat anymore?

By Robert L. Hall

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