We Lost Sight of the Future….

I remember when I was ten years old or so… I would think about the future. I would look into the future and think about how old I would be at certain times, and what year it would be when I was a certain age, if I lived that long.

I just awoke from a dream where a bunch of my friends and I were trapped on a theater balcony that was crumbling beneath our feet. Somehow I made it to the ground floor in one piece, and thus began helping my friends get down.

Two of my friends who really stood out in the dream were Jason and Chuck. I was arranging things to be more stable, for now the balcony had begun morphing into shelving for a garage or a warehouse. Jason was trapped over a water fountain and couldn’t get down. I found a safe place for them to get down, and advised Jason to follow the line and make his way to the safe spot; he was to the right of the safe spot. Chuck, on the other hand, was to the left of the safe spot, but the line he was behind was much shorter.

Yet, in spite of being in the short line, Chuck with all his stockiness jumped through a hole in the shelving down to the ground floor, and walked by Dirk (who was now on the floor with me helping people down) and I, and we both commended Chuck’s unsuspecting athletic agility.

Then I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom….

Like myself, Jason and Chuck were both drug addicts and alcoholics. I say ‘were’ because they’re both dead now, due to the effects of the disease of addiction, having never made it to the safe spot of recovery. I speculate that the water fountain Jason was trapped over represented the 12 Step Program of AA/NA, water being a symbol of life, because he spent many years around people who were in recovery, but was too vain, fearful, and self-deceived to grab a hold of it and live. No disrespect meant… he was a great guy in a lot of ways; very generous and thoughtful to the needs of others. Chuck I lost contact with for many years, until the advent of Facebook; he died shortly thereafter.

Upon awakening, I pondered the dream and realized that drugs had robbed us, at a very young age, of thinking about and planning for the future, even though they freed us from the pain and torment of our own personal demons, for a spell.