I had a dream last week that’s still reverberating in me. I thought I’d share it with you because it might mean something to you as well.
In the dream I’m in a commercial passenger jet. It’s early evening and the holidays are coming soon, so it’s already dark. We’re somewhere over North America heading west. For some reason I feel at liberty to approach the captain in the cockpit, and when I get there I ask, “When will we be landing?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“You don’t know? How can you not know?”
“We have one stop to make before we reach our destination. A layover.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” she says simply.
This doesn’t exactly make sense, so I’m feeling a bit befuddled when I return to the passenger cabin. Right as I’m about to sit down, I turn and notice that the captain, an attractive young woman with neatly done dark-brown hair, has followed me back and is chatting with the other passengers.
Then I notice that the plane has clearly just begun its descent. I approach the captain again. She’s still standing in the aisle.
“Feels like the plane has begun its descent now. Where are we landing?”
“I don’t know,” she says once again.
By this time I’m feeling flabbergasted and almost panicky. In the dream I’m thinking, "Hey, I’ve heard about autopilot and all, but I’d really rather have a pilot at the controls when we land!”
Then I lean over toward the darkened window, and looking down I notice that there are no signs of an airport below us. In fact, it looks like we’re going to land in a shopping center parking lot. Not a large parking lot, either. And not an empty one. It’s small and full of cars parked, I’m guessing, by holiday shoppers.
At that moment in the dream I am somehow transported to a kind of wide-angle, cinematic distance from the aircraft. I’m still quite high above the ground, though, and I can see the plane about to make what seems bound to be a catastrophic landing in a busy shopping center parking lot.
But that’s not what happens. The plane lands just fine in the impossibly small and crowded lot filled with light poles, cars and people. Nobody’s hurt. Nothing got damaged.
I awaken with my heart racing and the words “…not even a taillight got broken…” still echoing in my mind.
After recounting this dream a couple times and thinking about it plenty, I realized that I don’t have to worry so much about how things are going to land. My art, my writing, my actions, ideas, choices, or interests. People try to make such a virtue out of considering the impact of our actions on others, and yes, I get that, but there comes a point when it’s just too inhibiting and time-consuming to keep investing energy there. Best not to try so hard to work both sides of my relationships, whether it’s my personal relationships or those I form with unknown readers. The message I got from the dream was not to care so much where things go or how they’re gonna land, and not to second guess myself so much.
Truth is, we never really know how things are gonna land. Especially if we’re flying someplace new.