2:30 a.m.
I’m awake after my first two dream cycles – a wonderful deep sleep. But now I’m lying there, hoping in vain to get back into that deep-into-the mattress feeling. And I’m imagining what life might be like these days if humanity had taken it upon ourselves to pour all our strength into saving the health of the earth. I imagine the way it was during WWII when we pulled together as a community for a common cause. There was eager energy in the life-saving effort. Not like today when we ignore the devastating weather phenomena that continue to cost so much in lives and property lost.
I try to stop myself and move into my next dream (Maybe really a dream) of children all over the world getting up every day from their pallets or beds, rising into a clean environment, enjoying a nourishing breakfast, confident they will return to their beds at night. Pouring energy into a day of play, work, learning, joyfully celebrating their little and big bits of mastery. There’s nothing I like more than joy on a child’s face, whether over receipt of a new toothbrush or box of crayons or the realization of a source of pride in something they’ve done. I even like that look on grownups.
And then my thoughts slip into what’s happening to my beloved academia. What I once taught and encouraged so freely leads now to punishment and expulsion for some. Who knows, maybe even my forgiveness work would be seen as tainted.
Best I stop all this thinking before I plunge into grief. I pull some of my survival tools out of my psychological belt – especially thinking of getting back to work on my newly labeled book-to-be, I hope: How Could These Lovely People Have Let it Happen?: a Psychologist’s Intimate Journal. Doing something does give a sense of some control … Maybe it should be How Are We Letting it Happen?
monagustafsonaffinito 