Essence of reality
My young niece recently posted on her Facebook wall: “There’s a difference between dreams and real life; in dreams you go to sleep and you think about something and see it in your head, but then you wake up to find it wasn’t real...Real life is something you never wake up from and when only things that are possible happen."
According to Mark Twain, all of life is simply a dream, making each of us figments of our own imaginations. Therefore, no one should be surprised by anything, and nothing should happen to any of us because if each is a dream, the need for interaction is nonexistent.
Of course, if each is a dream and all dreams are intertwined, there would be endless chances of jumpy, woodsy things sneaking up on us because we would be constantly open to the eternal harassment of those types of things. Being one experienced at jumpy, woodsy things sneaking out and harassing, I have determined that either the dreams are intertwined or else this is reality and dreams abound subconsciously. And jumpy, woodsy things are everywhere, waiting to pounce.
That's why we have prayer.
Twain’s problem with life centered on refusing to believe in a God who would allow suffering and pain. His later works like "The Mysterious Stranger" and "The Damned Human Race" showed a very bitter man who had been through much suffering and was, in fact, looking for answers from a God who he believed only inflicted hurt. When his daughter died from epilepsy, he suffered immensely. One incident after another made him determine that if God exists, then he has a stark, weird sense of humor.
After reading his works, I can empathize with Twain in a way. He was hurting very much and was looking for someone to lash out at. In the end, he concluded, what use is life? The very question that made him so angry with God is the very one that can strengthen our faith. When he wanted an easy way out, he simply said that perhaps this is just all a dream . . . perhaps life is nonexistent, and, certainly, it isn't eternal. He gave up on hope. He denied faith.
God does allow hurt. I'm not sure he inflicts it. I'm not sure he revels in it. I am sure he is pleased when we become better people, closer to him as a result of it.
Why am I saying all this? To say, I guess, that it isn't all a dream. Hurt is hurt. Monsters are monsters, whether they are in our homes, at our work places, or hiding under our beds. And because they exist in various forms, they creep into our subconscious thought and sometimes take over our minds; they cause us to fear when, in fact, we should fear nothing that harms the body–only that which damages the soul.
Yes, monsters strike us even in our dreams. Sometimes they strike us mainly in our dreams to cause doubt and fear. Sometimes they warn us that we aren't quite as strong as we thought we were. Sometimes they are just there, lurking above us, below us, around us, trying to find a way in. And always they point us toward Someone powerful enough to help us overcome.
© 2014 donnaarthurdowns