Caught up in the Beat

“I had a dream last night, the same dream as many other nights up to a point.”

“I check in at a large hotel in a major city that is unfamiliar to me. I have something I need to do, but I decide to take a walk around the town and stretch my legs a little first. Sometimes it’s a meeting I need to go to, or a convention. Sometimes I don’t know what it is, but it’s something, just not yet.”

“In my haste to get out and walk, I forget to take my purse. I don’t have anything with me, not even the hotel key. After a while I realize that I am lost. I walk around and around, trying to find my way back to the big hotel whose name I can’t remember. It is a well-known hotel, a skyscraper; but everywhere I look is another giant hotel of one well-known chain or another. All of them look nice, but none seems as if it is the right one.”

“At this point, the dream differs. As I am walking, a festival begins to fill the streets. I am surrounded by people. I don’t know any of them, and they don’t know me. Then the dancing begins.”

“It is a hot night, and I have on business clothes. All around me are dark, semi naked bodies with brilliant plumage and headdresses, and they are dancing to steel drums that begin to make my entire body pulse along with the beat. I am so caught up in the music and the scene that I forget that I am lost, and I give myself over to the rhythm and the movement. My shoes are gone; I’ve abandoned them somewhere. I am having the time of my life. “

“Then I wake up and I feel exultant. That’s it. That’s the dream? What do you think it means, doc?”

The psychoanalyst looks at me and says calmly, “What do you think it means?”

“I think,” I say, “that it means that it’s time for me to quit my city job full of business trips to look-alike hotels in unknown towns. I think it’s a sign that I need to listen to my wild, native, inner self and celebrate more. But you tell me, what do you think it means?”

“Yes, it could mean that. Or it could just mean that you need to take more time to let loose, have fun, find your own place in the world without quitting your job. You could do that you know. You wouldn’t have to do both at the same time. By the way, this session has run over its time. Could you please pay me before you go today? Just in case you get lost somewhere listening to the beat. You understand.”