Without the benefit of living in someone elses skin, I have only my own experience to draw on. I’ll count reading and hearing the accounts of other people about their experiences as a form of personal experience because outside real events, reflecting on those will similarly affect personal change.

 

I almost used the word ‘growth’ in that thought, but people don’t come to positive conclusions in every case where they might. We head the direction we’re pushed or fight the current and go where we desire. This explains the genetic twins who follow different courses.

 

Where some shrivel up, others get steely and resilient. Where some grow happier and more thoughtful, others slip into opportunism and blame.

 

For me, there have been cycles of puzzling revelations amid matrices of personal challenge followed by vistas of stunning clarity.

 

It started, near as I can recall, with a dream set when I was four. At first, I saw a couple dressed and posed as bride and groom similar to those wax figures that used to top wedding cakes featuring the man in a black suit and the bride in a modest white dress whose bodice was adorned with lace overlay and whose skirt was long and full.

 

The two stood close, with eyes focusing forward. Forever in all directions in the air were identical others each spaced the same distance from each other. Any direction I looked, they stood.

 

This dream gave way to another, which when I awakened immediately after I took to be prophetic, foretelling future events in symbolisms. It’s as clear today as it was that night over half a century ago. Dreams have been an occasional source of very interesting life pointers.

 

On one occasion, I dreamt of an employee where I work. The next day, the same events depicted in the dream unfolded with pleasing exactness, revealing both the character of that employee and the correct way to handle her behavior.

 

Other dreams, also marked with the stamp of “this is important” came with no explanation. In all cases, such dreams remain very clear. They do not dissolve into wisps of dissipation as ordinary garden variety ones must.

 

When I was eight, I overcame something previously unconquerable with the help of dreams. One dream tested the theory, and the subsequent dream proved it true.

 

Sometimes, no dream is involved.

2am, I awaken. I’m twelve and laying on the bottom bunk. A sodium lamp outside the window casts light across the carpet, illuminating strands of translucent fiber. The detail is enticing. I hold my hand into the light and turn it slowly to watch the play of shadow and illumination on skin that for the first time is so detailed in the variety of it’s fine texture as to be art. The prints on the pad of each finger, the shimmer, the shallow penetration of light, and the sudden realization that I alone control this hand all came together as I whispered only to my self, “I am alive!”

 

I finally went back to sleep with a smile for a joy that really has never left me.

 

When I was sixteen, a dream illustrated a personal shortcoming that I  have endeavored to overcome ever since: timidity.

 

A series of dreams over a six month period in my early twenties solidified a resolve that I did not waiver from in an important matter that will affect generations to come.

 

One day, the idea for a work of art like none other I’ve ever done came to mind suddenly and with a very clear explanation. I do regret not applying myself to the advice. I’m a little slow sometimes.

Events surrounding it were puzzling. A seventeen year old girl who I knew asked me the next day after I’d painted it if I had made a painting that looks thus and thus, describing it perfectly. There was no way she could know it existed. I’d told no one and no pictures of it existed in that pre-digital age. The oil paint was still wet. Years after, she told me she’d seen it in a dream hanging on a wall in a house she was running out of. I was a little dissappointed. But now that part makes sense.

I’ve long since lost the original, but here is a version. It’s simplified, but similar enough to share.

 

The two dots of light represent people. The parallel lines that converge are their lives. They live similar lives long before meeting. The line beneath them represents the minimum standards by which they pattern their lives, which they remain steadfastly above. Other lives rise above, fall beneath, remain beneath, and vary in their commitment or ignorance of those standards. When the two unite, their lives elevate together and join.

 

I believed at the time that it was a guide for picking an eternal companion. Dang me. I got side tracked and didn’t follow the guide and the results were worse than missing a freeway exit.

 

As miserable as events following that miscalculation were, the lessons learned and the strengths acquired were incalculably positive. Attitude sometimes really does determine altitude.

 

This does seem to be a life of miracles. To this day, I have a good feeling about 2am.