For the past few weeks I’ve been reflecting on life lessons from the nursery rhyme, “Row, row, row your boat.” This week finds me at the end of the verse, “Life is but a dream.”
William Shakespeare said, “Life is but a dream, within a dream.” Is it? What a game-changer to reflect on the idea that this life is about as real as the dream you had last night. Think about that for a minute. What would it mean if it were true? What would it mean if we knew for certain that we were asleep in another world dreaming our current lives?
Would we spend so much of our energy working and sacrificing ourselves?
Would we spend so much of our time worrying?
If you don’t get something right in a dream, do you wake up the next morning freaking out that you’ve messed up? Of course not. It was just a dream. When we consider the possibility that life is a dream, we can relax.
The deeply spiritual among us have something in common — they are almost always smiling. That’s because they believe that everything is going to be OK. It always has been, and it always will be. We can’t get it wrong. The lessons we’re meant to learn will be learned whether we stress out or relax. There is no stopping them.
Of course, we can’t know all of life’s mysteries. In 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 the apostle Paul puts it succinctly, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever — faith, hope, and love — and the greatest of these is love.”
What if we’re dreaming right now? We could take a deep breath and relax. We could concentrate on loving our neighbors. Realizing that, in our essence, we are eternal, we could see this earth and this life as a place to learn. We could be safe in the knowledge that our real selves are still safely merged at home with God — because they never left there.
I’ll leave you with my New Year’s wish for you, expressed best by the brilliant Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho;
“Be present. Make love. Make tea. Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation. Buy a plant, water it. Make your bed. Make someone else’s bed. Have a smart mouth, and quick wit. Make art. Create. Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain. Take chances. Ask questions. Make mistakes. Learn. Know your worth. Love fiercely. Forgive quickly. Let go of what doesn’t make you happy. Grow.”
CHRISTINA PIERCE is the publisher of The Daily Iberian.
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