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Concerning Dreams, Babies, and Bathwater

April 11, 2009 1:49 AM

'm not one of those people that thinks that dreams mean something. In fact, I'm the opposite: I'm of the opinion that people who think that dreams mean something are dumb. As far as I'm concerned, dreams are a random collection of nonsense, devoid of any deeper significance. The idea that dreams are made up of representations of things that are going on in our waking lives is ridiculous to me. So that's why i was sort of shocked to have a dream last night that I found sort of relevant.

In this dream, I was a lawyer. I had my own law practice. But instead of having my office where it actually is, my office was in Nogales. In fact, it was in the neighborhood where I grew up. In the dream, I ran my law office out of the house of a kid I used to play with (I'm not gonna call him a friend). One day, I had an idea: if running a law office is a great idea, then running a moving business out of the law office would be an even better idea!

So that's what I did. I started a moving business to run alongside my law practice. I don't know why. Immediately, I got a call from someone who wanted to hire me to help him move. Fine. So L-Dawg and I got his stuff and moved it into the office. Later, I realized that we had to move the stuff to his new place, so we started moving things. The first thing we carried was a bookshelf. For some reason, it still had all the books in it. We got distracted and put the bookshelf down in the driveway of this house.

L-Dawg and I went inside and dealt with whatever it was that distracted us. Eventually, I realized that we should probably deal with the bookshelf, so I asked L-Dawg where we had left it. He said it was in the living room. I said that I was in the living room and that I couldn't see it, so he was wrong. Then we remembered that we had left it in the driveway. We looked outside and the bookshelf was gone. I started freaking out. This guy had trusted me with his belongings and I had completely neglected to care for them. Then I thought "Fuck, and I didn't even get insurance to cover our moving business's clients!" So I had let this guy down in two ways.

We started canvassing the neighborhood, looking for any sign of the bookshelf. Eventually, we walked past what was my grandma's house (my grandma lived next door to me when I was growing up). There, in her garden, we found the remnants of the bookshelf. There were the sides and the shelves, mixed in with a chopped-down tree. But there were no books. I cursed and berated myself for allowing this to happen.

My life went to shit. I was inconsolable. I gave up the moving business and the law practice and wallowed at how I had let someone down like that. And then I woke up.

So what's the lesson? Well, like everyone else, I make mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes eat at me, and I blow them completely out of proportion. I lose sight of more important things. I lose sight of the fact that nothing is perfect, least of all me and the things I do. The guilt eats at me. So I woke up from that dream and I realized that I have to learn to be easier on myself about my failings. I have to keep trying to be better, but I can't throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.


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