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I had a dream last night. It was a metaphor for what is happening to all of us.
I dreamed I was sitting at my computer and trying to open the ICE (in case of emergency) file to find the combination to my safe so that I could put a wad of $1000 dollar bills in there that I had somehow extracted from the bank. For some reason I could not call up the file with the combination. My computer was not cooperating (seems to happen a lot these days!).
In the other room a fellow named David was sitting and chatting with my wife while I was desperately trying to find the numbers that would let me open the safe and put the money in there for safekeeping. That is really odd, because I know the combination by heart, but I couldn’t retrieve it for some reason. (dreams afflict us with that sense of trying to run but our legs being caught in molasses….)
Sitting behind me was David’s brother ‘Michael’. Michael had been recently released from prison and was a chronic thief. He was sitting behind me, silently eyeing my pile of cash while I was pounding on the computer keyboard. I KNEW he was eyeing the cash and that made my quest for the combination all the more urgent. As I worked on the computer with growing frustration, I could sense that Michael was becoming more tense. I could feel him behind me and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye as I feverishly searched for the file. Finally he gave up all pretense of being quietly sitting there, and started to pace behind me, growing more and more impatient while glancing nervously and repeatedly at my money on the desktop. I tried to hide the pile of cash under my arms—in my desk drawer; behind the papers on the desk---but I knew that everywhere I put it, he was following my motions like a cat watching his prey. Finally he stood on his chair and lost all sense of propriety, shaking with agitation and babbling about how “all he needed was one of the bills and he would be satisfied”. I was terrified!
I turned in my chair and called out to David to come here right away…..in an annoyed voice he asked me what I wanted…..I then screamed his name as loud as I could ……..!
My wife said the sound that came out of me and woke her up was a word that had an “A” in it, but that is all she could make out. She said the neighbors probably heard me bellowing.
I had a lot of trouble going back to sleep.
Don’t we all have ‘Michael’ sitting behind us trying to get our nest egg? Don’t we all feel like someone or something is siphoning off our savings and leaving us anxious; fearing the constant presence of economic disaster lurking just around the corner?
Where is that coming from?
I used to be really confident that whatever ups and downs we had as a family; as a business venture; as a country we could rebound. Bounce back. Try again. Today, that sense of optimism is smothered by the wet blanket of special interest, greed, and political partisanship. Our entire civic enterprise is mired in the inability and unwillingness of our representatives in Congress to act. Unless we figure out what to do about that as a people and a nation, ‘Michael’ will always be just over our shoulder watching our treasure; waiting for his moment to steal it all and leave us with nothing.
The time has come for people of good will and intelligence to take hold of our destiny and get rid of the obstructionists. I read an editorial by Bob Herbert in the New York Times that hints at the beginnings of an awakening by just those kinds of people.
A M B I E N
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