Wings of Adventure

I was having that dream again.

How many times did this make?  Three?  Five?  I wasn't sure.  It must have been a year since I'd last had the same dream, and every time most of the details faded before I was even fully awake.  What little I did remember was always the same.

Until this time.

It started out like always.  I found myself walking down a dirt path with rows of old-fashioned canvas tents on either side.  Then again, everything as far as the eye could see was just that.  Dirt.  Not quite desert, but not the most hospitable climate either.  The makeshift camp was buzzing with activity, people feverishly shouting to each other as they ran back and forth.  A few men sat quietly outside their respective temporary abodes, cleaning a rifle or strapping on a holster belt and loading revolvers.  Most everyone wore a trenchcoat I could only describe as Fallout-esque, the kind that would keep away the dust yet still breathe so you wouldn't roast in the sun.  Now and then someone would wave me down as I passed by, shouting and giving me a worried look.  Judging from the tone of my responses and the way the person usually ran off afterward, I was someone of importance in this setting.  Yet, even with all this staying clear in my mind each time I woke, I could never remember the words that were spoken or the faces of those around me.

It's funny, the little details you remember from your dreams.

It was after the last of these heralds left to go about his business that I realized something was different this time.  Every other time I'd had this dream, I was just an observer, watching myself walk along and shout what I assumed to be orders.  This time, though, I was seeing everything through my own eyes.

That, and for some reason, I was barely at eye level with everyone else's knees.

Thankfully this dream was always semi-lucid, and my realization did not immediately shatter the illusion.  I was about to take that risk either way, though: next came the part where I always woke up.  I decided to keep letting the dream take its own course, suddenly curious if it would play out differently this time.

As I neared the end of the row, I spotted a man sitting outside the last tent on the right, using a small barrel as a sort of stool.  He stuck out like a sore thumb amid all the hustle and bustle.  Silent and unmoving, he simply stared out toward the horizon, shoulders slumped, oblivious to the commotion behind him.  I paused only for a moment before moving toward him.

Now I knew it was indeed playing out differently.  Each time I'd had the dream, I had stopped in my tracks before being jolted fully awake just after noticing this man.  And yet, before I knew it, I found myself standing next to him.

For a full minute we said nothing and looked nowhere but straght ahead.  Then, sighing, he finally spoke first, and I remember his words clear as day.

"How do you do it?"

Now I turned to look up at him, raising an eyebrow but saying nothing.

It was enough of a response for him.  "Why do you keep fighting so hard?" he breathed, eyes still locked forward.

I suddenly felt myself lift off the ground and float around so that I was directly in front of him.  He was forced to look me in the eye now.

I stayed quiet for a moment, studying his features intently for some reason I didn't fully understand.  Dream logic somehow told me he wasn't a day over thirty, but his face looked so tired and ragged, his scruffy hair and beard so unkempt, that I might have thought him ten years older had I not been looking so closely.

Words suddenly leapt unbidden to my lips.

"Same reason you and everyone else is here, whether you know it or not," I replied, in a voice not my own.  "Because no one else will.  Because if I don't take the chance while it's there in front of me... I may not live to regret it."

I never did get to see or hear his reaction.  It was as if my cryptic response tripped some alarm in my sleeping brain.  Alas, my subconscious had finally caught up with me, and, discovering that I had wandered outside this dream's usual bounds, hit the eject button.

And I woke up.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things

you didn't do than by the ones you did do.  So throw off the bowlines.

Sail away from the safe harbor.  Catch the trade winds in your sails.

Explore.  Dream.  Discover.

~ H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You