12.01.2006

When I awoke from this dream, I was wasted. It was as though I hadn't slept a wink. I felt weak, like a newborn infant, and knew that something special had transpired within me. I remembered everything single aspect of the dream, ... a myriad of details.

When I went to school that day it was teaching as usual. But I also related the dream to various colleagues, who seemed impressed with my 15 years worth of "therapy" in one single dream. I didn't think of it as such. Because there was one part that eluded me: What were the 3 questions?

The guy on the bench had asked me 3 questions, and I knew that they were related to one another in such a way as to provide me with relief from my own personal misgivings about life. I remember having the answers to the questions, and that's what was healing. But, what were the questions?

It was 6 years later that the questions finally came to me. And they came in a very unusual manner.

My college classes were language classes. I was teaching German and Spanish. One semester, my last class of the day was a Spanish class. There was a young man in the last class who sat in the very front row, right in front of my podium. He seemed like an all-American kid, probably having grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth --- or so I thought.

For some reason, this young man found my classes very interesting and wanted to discuss philosophy after class. I sat with him under an oak tree between buildings after the final class of the day one Tuesday afternoon. We chatted "the meaning of life" for an hour or so, after which he left the conversation with a single question. It was an intriguing conversation, and left me remembering what it was like to be that age: a first year college student.

The following week, we once again sat on a bench on campus and pondered life's trivialities. Much discussion about growing up and being raised and education and all sorts of notions that make one follow his search for truth. Again, after talking for a couple of hours, we departed with another question. As I drove home, I suddenly recalled! Uh, ... we had two familiar questions now. And putting them together was traumatic enough in the realizations that they brought forth.

I actually became afraid to get the third question. How was it that years after having the dream the reality of it could be brought forth by conversations with a stranger whose life had been much more troubled that what I could ever have imagined? How was it that the image of us sitting there on a bench, speaking candidly about life itself, could have been foreseen in the premonitions of a dream?

I didn't go to school the next Tuesday. I felt ill. I was afraid that if we sat and talked again, I would get the third questions, and it would make a major difference in things to come. No matter. The students was a concerned individual, and when he found out that class was cancelled, he called me at home.

Uh, ... I answered the phone, excusing myself with the ill-feeling and the fact that I didn't want to talk to anyone. Well, that lead straight into the third question. It came before I could even manage to "not" have a conversation. We did talk anyway ... especially after the question was asked. And I had been correct. This question was the most powerful of all. Combined with the previous questions, everything made sense. I had "waited" for six years, and finally finished remembering the dream. Peace came. And there's been a great deal of happiness ever since.

"What are the questions?" you may ask. Well, they'll be here next month. Suffice it to say that many aspects of this dream were replayed in real life, and finally understood. But "how" and "why" this came to be is well beyond my own comprehension. Life is like that.