Scared to Life
Excerpt from “Why Knot?” Buy the book at Amazon
One night, I saw three hoodlums with machetes walk through the outside wall of my second-floor bedroom. I thought I was awake. I screamed.
It took a while for me to realize it was a vision, and for my breathing and heart rate to slow down. In the process, it occurred to me that I had come close to being scared to death. Then I realized that I had been scared to life.
A dream like that — not an ordinary dream composed of images from everyday life, and not a recurring dream heavy with symbolism, but one that comes out of nowhere and that you see while semi-awake — must serve a purpose.
That vision was a wakeup call for me, like a near-death experience. It was a reminder of my mortality, a warning that if there was anything I wanted to do, I’d better do it. If the obvious physical signs of illness or aging aren’t enough to get me going, then my unconscious will take over and scare me into life.
That dream was an affirmation of a basic belief of mine — that as individuals and as a species, self-regulating mechanisms come into play, pushing us toward balance and reason and compassion.
