In which I dream of the future

This week, I dreamed I had dinner with someone I wronged in the past.

In real life, I have wanted to apologize for years. I have done the work. I have come to peace with the person I was, and also come to understand how untenable my position was, how inherently harmful and wrong. I have thought about what changes I needed to make in my life to be different, to not wrong anyone like that again, and I have made them. In my dream, it was my time to say all of that, and I didn’t. Because it wasn’t necessary. I connected deeply with this person who by rights should have challenged me, but who trusted me as if everything had already been said.

I woke up feeling more peaceful than I have in a long time.

Here’s the thing: in our dreams, everyone we meet is ourselves. Whoever does something to you in your dream, it’s you doing it to you. When I dream that someone reveals something terrible and secret, it’s because I feel like I am betraying myself. When I dream someone keeps closing doors, it’s that I close myself off from moving forward.

And so here I was, meeting someone (me) whom I had wronged in the past, but we had both moved on — past me and present me — and shared from a place of clarity and hope.

This feels significant. It is no coincidence, I am sure, that, on the day before I had this dream, I had come across a letter I wrote some 13 years ago, stating my desire for a simpler life, a life I still long for. The letter from past me laid out in detail the daily routine that feels good in my body and anchors my soul. When I found the letter, I thought: wow, I have known all this for 13 years. For 13 years, I have been ignoring this intuitive knowledge. For 13 years, I have been ignoring myself.

When I think about it, I know why I didn’t immediately implement those insights. At the time, they felt disconnected from anything possible. They felt born out of desperation, like a cop-out, an escape, something I wanted merely in order to not be where I was. The routine I craved felt like moving away from something rather than moving towards something.

But I have done the work. I have come to peace with the person I was. She and I — past me and present me — have reached this quiet, peaceful impasse which really is more like a delta before the open sea.

Now what, we ask each other.

It’s time to move on, we say.