It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary. Jason Mraz
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead. Louisa May Alcott
Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. Gustave Flaubert
I turned my nightmares into fireflies and caught them in a jar. Laini Taylor
Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true. Arthur Golden
I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. Charles Dickens
In my dreams, I never have an age. Madeleine L’Engle
As affirmed by numerous medical professionals, among the more unsettling dynamics of the current COVID pandemic is its impact on our interior life. The dreams of many of us, myself included, are becoming more intense, more graphic, in some instances more frightening, dredging up experiences and reactions we’ve long forgotten (or in some cases merely wished to forget).
Part of this, of course, is the unconscious recovery of negative impacts from those other times in our lives when we felt a bit “shipwrecked,” when we could do little more than metaphorically turn our despairing eyes towards a horizon that seemed to offer some respite from our loneliness, isolation, currently taking the forms of being physically distanced from those we care about but also at some distance from what has given at least some of us a sense of identity and belonging in the world.
These are not trifling matters. While most of us understand that our primary task at this moment is to keep ourselves and others out of intensive care, and to do what we can to ensure that children and the most vulnerable can find sufficient resources and medical attention amidst the current deprivations and restrictions of movement, we also recognize that, just a few short weeks ago, many of our lives were defined by a different set of routines, indeed in more than a few instances a different set of dreams.
Some of those routines and dreams had probably outlived their useful lives, were bringing us more anxiety than fulfillment; indeed were often residing in some realm beyond the reach of conscious choice and which in too many instances no longer approximated what we claimed to be our “highest aspirations” for ourselves or others.
But whether fulfilling to us or not, whether good for the planet or not, it is no easy matter to scrutinize and revise years of personal and professional habit, to let our best dreams “get under our skin” once again and help us to define what is both possible and preferable, to enable us to “strive afresh” in a world that, for now at least, doesn’t seem to be encouraging striving in any form.
Of all the reading I did this week, I was most impressed by an article suggested by a longtime friend and colleague, Lester Ruiz. The piece called “Beyond the Blizzard” (click here) raises the possibility that, in some fundamental sense, the “businesses” we have been associated with “no longer exist.” They (including Global Action) no longer exist because this pandemic is NOT like a blizzard, not like that scenario where we hunker down for a few days, shovel the sidewalks and driveways as best we can, wait for the sun to effect a bit of melting, and slowly get back to our normal ways.
So what is our normal now? How do we move forward with the most essential of our tasks and commitments? How do we overcome the anxieties that now dominate so many of our sleeping hours? How do we connect our deepest dreams to which, in some instances, we have only recently become reacquainted, with our current, indeterminate, shelter-in-place realities?
Most everyone has a story to tell in this context, some more harrowing than others, some indeed harrowing beyond the imagination of most of us. Our story is not that at all, but is certainly a confirmation of the claim that the business we have been in for 20 years, the business for which we are known and have been funded generously by others – that business in some sense no longer exists. We cannot mentor young people at the UN because neither they nor we have access to headquarters and may not for some time. We are permitted to follow only the smallest portion of what diplomats are discussing now by video teleconference. And while the UN continues to make selective progress on conflicts such as in Yemen and seeks to protect its World Health Organization from unscrupulous attacks, it is the pandemic that dominates every aspect of policy as it dominates media coverage across the board. It is the pandemic that calls our priorities and commitments to account, even as it restricts options for keeping those that survive scrutiny in the public eye.
Like many others, we have to figure out the “business” that we are in now. Perhaps it is, after all is said and done, the business of dreams, those dreams of fairness and equity, of access to clean water and unpolluted air, of leadership that actually inspires our better selves, of learning that both fulfills our obligations to the young and helps us to uphold and extend the best of the human spirit, of peoples that have cause to fear less and trust more, of weapons that are far less accessible that medical gear.
The dramatic image at the top of this post is of a “dream catcher.” I have several hanging throughout my New York apartment courtesy of Mac Legerton, the late Linda Bull and other friends. These symbols of indigenous wisdom act in my home as a “filter” of sorts, catching the most debilitating nightmares (as though they were fireflies destined for a jar) and allowing the best of dreams to pass.
This world needs the best of our dreams to pass, and not only to pass but to find their full expression on a planet now reeling from the “adversity” of viruses in our midst and others yet to come. Those “ageless” dreams that we claim to have inspired our own work and that of so many others – including dreams we have misplaced or failed to follow over the years – we can here acknowledge that the nurturing and sharing of such dreams may now indeed be our work in the world, the best contribution we can make to healing our planet and each other amidst the current viral adversity.
If so, we can only hope and pray that we are up to the challenge.
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