Dreams

Quickly, think about what are the top three things that make you happy that you are living?

Just think about it for a bit…

________________

Done?

Cool, here is my answer:

Arguably, one of the best things about being alive is having the ability to dream.

In this particular situation, I’m referring to the dreams that we have when sleeping, although I am happy to have the ability to do both when sleeping and while awake.

Last night I had a good sleep and a nice long dream.  This is significant because ever since I’ve been to college I have had plenty of ok sleeping experiences, but to have a good, restful ones has been elusive.  In addition, to have restful sleep accompanied with the pleasure of a dream has been almost non-existent.  But this morning was delightful when I woke up feeling refreshed, stress free, and a smile on my face from the good, long dream that I had.

I believe that ‘good’ dreaming is a way that your body deals with the things that you concern yourself with during the day.  At least in my lifetime of dreaming, my dreams are always associated with something recognizable from my daily life and is interpreted in a way that suites the reality of the dream.  For example, my homie last week asked me if I would survive a zombie apocalypse and what would be the best way to survive and then me and another friend later that day talked about thinking in another language.  That night I had a dream about surviving a zombie apocalypse in Proxy (the name of the building I live in) and while thinking of what to do, all of my thoughts where in Japanese.

Digressing from my Shawn of the Dead meets Japan dream, more and more each day I am glad to be in Japan.  This past week was hell and it showed me what I need to do in order to make the most out of this program while I’m here.  On the other hand, instead of beating myself up over things that I should have done, I’ll hold my head up at the fact that I’m studying much more than I ever have in my life and I’m actually doing my best to conquer this language.  As suggested by another friend of mine, I’m starting to replace English words with their Japanese equivalent when I think and it’s starting to help out in conversation.

People have been giving me compliments on my Japanese as well.  It’s weird to think that people can actually understand me when I’m using all of the brain power that I can muster to choke out one sentence, but it is a confidence boost when the gesture is given to me.  Today, I’m going to put myself in a good position to be on top of my game this whole week, so I’m excited to get my head in the books and practice Japanese.

There have been two things that I have worked hard for in my life that hasn’t fucked me over in one way or another, and that is getting accepted to Soka and making it to China and Japan.  I’ve failed at so many things in my life, but it warms my heart to actually see big things working out in my life.  Right now it feels like I’m living in a dream that I don’t want to end any time soon.  When watching tv the other day with some homies, Supernatural came on in English and we were watching it.  While watching, it was like I slipped back into reality – Watching t.v. in English, talking in English, etc.  But when the commercials came on in Japanese, the realization hit me “Oh…yeah…I am in Japan”.

You would think that it would be the other way around; slipping back into reality when I realized that I was in Japan, but to think about the fact that I will have to leave in three months just about brings me to tears.  Tears of reminder that I’ll have to go back to reality one day.

However, I do not plan on ever shedding those tears once this dream is over.  Nah, I’ll come back into reality the same way I woke up to it this morning.

With a smile on my face at what a wonderful dream I had.

PNBE

Snowfield Rhapsody