Walking the Tightrope: Dreams
Sally Codman suggests that if Martin Luther King was alive today he would be horrified to see that people of every colour still live on lonely islands of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of world prosperity.
Sally Codman suggests that if Martin Luther King was alive today he would be horrified that people of every colour still live on lonely islands of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of world prosperity.
The words of the old Joni Mitchell Big yellow Taxi song - "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" came to mind recently. A few broken nights made me think of sleep in this context.
You never really appreciate the benefits of a good night's sleep until you don't get one.
Generally I'm a fairly robust person. I don't have any chronic diseases (at least not any that have been diagnosed) and most days I feel fighting fit .... unless I miss my sleep.
To feel anything like human I'm one of those weaklings who need at least seven hours Zzzzzs a night - preferably eight or nine if I want to be on top form. Anything less than six hours of shut eye and I'm like a bear with a sore head and a not very efficient bear at that.
The inconvenience of needing a lot of sleep only really hit home when Eldest Daughter was born. She was (and still is) a dreadful sleeper, the sort of baby who woke if you so much as tiptoed up to her cot to peek at her.
She was still waking two or three times a night at seven months old, by which time I was a neurotic zombie, not really fit to be driving a pram, never mind a car.
Back then, if you'd offered me a million pounds or the opportunity to sleep as long as I liked, I'd have chosen a trip to the Land of Nod without hesitation.
Some interesting facts about sleep (culled from the Internet) claim a new baby results in 400-750 hours of lost sleep for parents and that's just in the first year of life. Multiply by three and add-on extras for teething, illness etc when they're younger, plus waiting up for them until the wee small hours when they're older and I'm probably still owed a few hours.
Then there's the other side of things, when you actually drop off to sleep, or, as Shakespeare put it:- "To sleep, perchance to dream." Dreams, or those bits we remember, hold a fascination all their own.
Just recently the alarm clock saved me from ruining my diet by ringing just as I was about to raid the frozen chocolate gateaux section in a Supermarket - then again, I'm sure calories consumed in dreams don't count.
Another morning I was relieved to awake from the repeated frustration of trying to use a phone on which the numbers kept swapping around or disappearing completely.
At our house, if you mention you've had a strange dream, before you know where you are the kitchen is swamped with accounts of weird visions that have haunted other family members during the night. At times it feels as if everyone is trying to outdo everyone else in strangeness.
We find we can spot other people's daytime anxieties reflected in their dreams, but not in our own. Today, when we mention dreams, most people think you are talking about waking dreams or daydreams, which often include hopes for the future. People say they dream of being a singer, dancer or movie star.
Shakespeare aside, the most famous speech on Dreams has to be that by Martin Luther King in 1963. Who could watch the T.V. footage of King declaring "I have a dream" and not be moved by it?
In the sixties, King's dream was a dream of freedom from the oppression of discrimination and segregation that blighted the lives of Negroes in America. He says in his famous speech; " ........the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity".
This famous speech ends with the hope that "All of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!"
If King were alive today, he would no doubt be horrified that many people of every colour still live on lonely islands of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of world prosperity.
And if he was updating his dream he might include Muslims and Christians in his list of people whom he hoped would join hands and find freedom.
But today it would be a dream of freedom from the fear of despotic dictators, war, starvation, sickness, oppression and terrorism. We've got a long way to go before that dream comes true.
Copyright Sally Codman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
