The other night I had a dream. I was dangling from a ladder attached to a
metal catwalk, bolted to a mountainside.
Below me was an endless drop, and a tiny metal platform that my mother
was standing on. The rungs of the ladder
were just far enough apart to make climbing down impossible. I was holding on for dear life. My knuckles turning white as I gripped the
cold metal. My palms were sweaty, I
looked down and the shock of it made it hard to breathe. I tried to pull myself up higher, but my arms
were too weak. The platform beneath me
was just far enough of a fall to be dangerous.
Then my Mom yelled up at me, “ Climb down you pansy… LET GO!”
I was
watching a TV show the other day, there was a man in rehab and he was told to
‘Let go and Let God’. This expression
pissed me off. No one can ‘let’ God do
anything. If God exists and he is some
kind of omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, creator entity, then there is no
letting him do anything. The truth is if
there is a God, he is some kind of voyeur.
A perverted, tabloid journalist junkie who apparently loves watching
people when they are at their most vulnerable.
Just waiting in the wings to hack your email, but in his case he doesn’t
need to, because he sees all. He sees
all and does nothing. And of course we
were made in his image which is why human beings are disgusting pathetic, self-
gratifying people. We are all hoping
against hope that there is another car accident, or natural disaster, or celeb
sex scandal, so we have something to watch.
So, we can sit and watch and not do anything. Just soak in the horror to make ourselves
feel better.
I
don’t know what the dream meant. Maybe
it means I feel like I am on the edge of something. With no safety net, no parachute, and no one
to catch me. Maybe it means that I need
to take a risk, a leap of faith. Maybe I
am just afraid of heights and my mother’s judgement. I guess maybe all us of need to let go. To let life happen. To move forward, and keep moving
forward. We don’t need to let go and let
God. We need to let go and let ourselves
be. Be what we truly want to be. Get off the sidelines. Stop watching and do. It may be sappy and trite and contrived and
clichéd. I for one have hope that when I
let go of the ladder the fall won’t hurt because I know I made a choice. Maybe not the ‘right’ choice, but a choice
nonetheless. Choice is what it is all
about.
