Had a pretty vivid dream last night. I don’t make it a habit of reporting my dreams, but this one would make for a pretty good story. But I’m going to tell it in a personal context instead. It turned out to be a pretty good life lesson for me:
I appeared in the concrete visitor stands of Sprayberry High School’s football stadium. It was the fall of 1984 and to be honest, our team was struggling. It was my junior year and I was coming off a nasty A/C shoulder separation. I was playing hurt. And not playing well. But present day me was sitting in the visitor’s section (that has a nice metaphorical ring to it) and watching the team. And then I saw me without a helmet. I decided I needed to go tell myself to avoid a bunch of mistakes. (At least, I thought, I should tell myself to stay out of the sun.)
An old man next to me told me not to do it (was it me as an old man? Heck if I know). I didn’t listen. I kept thinking about all the things I could change. The second quarter ran out and went down to the field and met the team as it headed to the locker room under the stadium. I saw so many of my old teammates come off the field. It was so real. Then, right as I was about meet myself, my alarm clock went off. It was 4:30 a.m. and the dream was abruptly over.
Most of what I know about time travel comes from Star Trek and Back to the Future ( with a pinch of Einstein thrown in). But as I thought about what I had just experienced in my mind, I came to this conclusion: I wouldn’t change a darn thing in my life. I celebrate every screw-up, mistake, flop and failure just as much as I cherish every victory. Like water rushing over a stone, time has shaped me into who I am. If I changed one thing for the better back then, I might have never met my wife and never had my children. I got out of bed and walked over to their rooms and just stared at them sleeping.
No, if I had a chance to go back to 1984, I’d watch myself living a life that was going to lead to something really cool in the long run. Sometimes your best dreams happen when you are awake.
that was an interesting dream, for sure. I had a dream last night where a priest who died about 10 years ago was telling me “you know who you are” and I told my husband the same thing in the dream, “we know who we are.” So weird…