Ah, dreams...

Last night I had another bizarre dream, but this time it was the resolution that stuck with me.

Remember Shirley Jackson's The Lottery? I remember reading it in school and will never forget how it creeped me out. If you've not read it, you must. It's all about how superstitions can overtake us, how our communal patterns of behavior can supersede all sense of reason. Lifetime television made a sub-par made-for-TV movie out of it, but nothing could ever duplicate the feeling I had when I first read the story.

So in my dream last night, I was in a community, not really a family, but most of the faces seemed familiar. One of the members of this group was one of those sad-sack cases, a person who had been the brunt of life's cruelties from birth onward. I remember him as being blond and small in stature, and maybe there was a little baseball hat or a beanie on his head. He was an older teenager or a young adult, and I just felt sorry for him, as did everyone else present.

In the dream, we were required to determine which one of us would be killed. If you've read The Lottery, take the atmosphere of that story and plant it on this one. No one seemed all that upset about anything, but I was thinking how ridiculous it was that we were going through these time-worn behaviors to do something so cruel. I also thought that there was no way that the group would ever decide to take out the young man who had been so beaten down by life. No way would anyone agree to make him the victim again. The larger group was divided into smaller groups, and wouldn't you know it, I was put in with the young man. We were a small group, maybe six of us, and we sat down around a table.

The choice as to who to eliminate (at this point I figured I was at the elimination table) was to be a random one, although I believed the young man would be excluded from any such selection because of his circumstances. So with six of us there, one probably out of the running, that left five, and a 20% chance of being knocked off was a little too high for me, and at the same time I couldn't fathom actually making that choice or carrying it out against another person.

So I did something that in that circumstance might be considered either foolhardy or heroic. I spoke up.

I explained that what we were about to do was absurd, that the antiquated habits of our predecessors were not only out of touch with our current reality, but were barbaric and needless.

And the table agreed. All it took was one person saying something, and suddenly the threat was gone.

Oh, if life could be that simple.

In the dream, I was genuinely surprised that my words had any effect at all. Before I said anything, the fear of dying was tangible, and I remember feeling physically ill at the prospect. And then I took the step of speaking out, and everything changed.

What is the message I'm to take from that dream? Is there one? Or was the dream just a random collection of things I'd seen and experienced over the last few days? Was it due to the blackberries I ate yesterday? Was the moon in an odd phase? Or should I take something from it, maybe the notion that I need to speak up when I see things that need to be changed? I feel like I do that sometimes, but maybe not enough.

I believe in being open to whatever the universe wants to share, and so I'll tuck this memory away and consider it.

And maybe eat fewer blackberries before bed tonight.