My Very Interesting Dream

The other night I had a dream that was so interesting and insightful, I just had to write about it.

There was a group of settlers that had traveled for months across land and sea, looking for a new home to live free and practice their beliefs without condemnation.  Men and women determined to create a perfect society for their children fought off disaster and death for their goal. 

Sound familiar so far? Now the dream twist:

They found their perfect place to settle, but by the time they got there the group had split up into two factions, and since they couldn't agree on how to live together they decided to create two colonies.  One faction, the one that I was a part of, thank goodness, was peaceful and creative and attracted the most talented and hard working people.  The other faction was left with opinionated, pessimistic, fearful narcissists who believed their way was the only way to live. 

My faction created a clean, happy community, full of bright and cheerful optimists.  Our talented carpenters found the best wood to work with to build nice, bright, and sturdy homes.  Our farmers knew how to pick the best natural resources to create the best crops, and our chefs learned how to create the perfect nutritious meals from the bounty of our crops.  Our leaders knew how to negotiate peacefully with our neighbors, the natives of the land.  Our traders were more than willing to trade quality goods for quality goods.  We lived joyfully and creatively and never stopped helping each other live our best lives.

The other faction chose to live in anger and violence.  Instead of creating a sturdy and efficient society, they blamed each other for their problems, grew lazy about growing crops, built haphazardly and cheaply, never preparing for bad weather or lean times.  Their women were afraid of their husbands and did what they were told, their children grew to be mean and hateful, the most sensitive of them were bullied by their community.  They continued to wage war against their neighbors and cultivated an environment of jealousy and greed.  Their people grew sickly, they went hungry and couldn't trust each other to get help from their own community leaders.  Even during the most sunny days their homes were dark and damp and full of dis-ease.

One day, after a season of cultivating jealousy and hatred toward our sunny little town, the strongest and angriest of the other faction decided they had had enough.  They decided to wage war on us and take our town, crops, and trade from us.  On a dark and muddy day they marched into our streets and called out our leaders.  They demanded we embark into battle over what we had created.

After a short discussion among themselves, our community leaders said no.  We will not fight for our town.  We will trade - everybody in my town will pack up and leave.  We will move into the other faction's town and they could have ours, no questions asked, no strings attached.  This took the other faction by surprise, but they agreed to the conditions, believing it an easy victory.  They weren't completely happy - they were stuck with unresolved anger and unspent negative energies - but they decided to deal with that later and move in. 

So we packed up and left.  We left our crops, our art, and our beautiful homes behind.  When we got to the other faction's town we realized we had not anticipated what we ended up with.  Not only did we have to start from scratch, we had to undo everything they did, fix the land, heal the wounds created with our native neighbors, get rid of the disease and pestilence that the other faction had attracted and then start from scratch.  We could've just moved on and found a land already healed to build upon, but we decided to take responsibility for our people's actions and bring light back to the  ruins created by the dark faction.  We knew that we still had the best carpenters, the finest artisans, the most talented farmers and chefs and though we would have to work harder than we ever had before, we could achieve what we had created once before again.  So we went to work.

As the dream wound to an end, the hardship started to wear us down.  Drama was ensuing, people were fighting hard to stay positive, hope was becoming hard to hold on to.   We knew the other faction had taken their warring ways with them and were burning the bridges we had built with the native population.  They continued to over-harvest the land and kill off the animals that had kept us fed.  Worry started to seep into our consciousness about the possibility of war with the other faction when they tired of ruining our original town.

All we could do was live for the day and according to our beliefs and will.  We hung on to our optimism and light and powered on.

Our adopted town grew healthier and lighter every day.  We felt it was worth every challenge put forth to us.  We were not ready to give up.

Then I woke up.  I told you it was an interesting dream.