Bringing Dreams to Reality

One night recently I woke up alarmed by a vivid, terrifying dream. In my dream, I was reading on my bed during a typical afternoon, when I was startled by the sense of an earthquake. The dream intensified as one earthquake rolled into another, and then morphed into a tornado. I ran through my crumbling home, collecting the dog and cat and finding my roommate, finally escaping out the door just as the ceiling collapsed around us. Once outside, surrounded by hundreds of unfamiliar and panicking neighbors, we stumbled around to find solid ground. Suddenly we realized there were sentient fireballs barreling down the hillside toward us. I woke up as I was desperately trying to find an escape from the incoming wall of fire, the hoards of people, the bottomless cracks swallowing the ground.

I'd had this dream before, in 2020 when I was in the midst of a cross-country move while the country was in the midst of what we now know was just the beginning of the pandemic.

Recent studies have shown bad dreams are on the rise, along with an amplification of anxiety, depression, and a host of societal downturns. As I processed my own dream I wondered what could have possibly happened next had I stayed asleep longer? We almost can’t dare consider how much worse global circumstances could get if we stay on this trajectory. It is hard for some of us to grasp why much of the world still seems to be asleep, unaware of the risks and trajectory of our current behavior. But here we are, midstream in so many changes, so many scary new realities, and also so many opportunities to do the work and make things better.

During the pandemic I worked as a climate grief consultant as I worked on the upcoming book about climate grief. I called my work, my little company of one, Blue Sky Alchemy. The word alchemy refers to the art of transforming something for the better. It seems like magic. Even in traditional alchemy’s early days before the science of chemistry, there was both art and science to the process of creation and transformation.

There is both heart and logic applied to truly meaningful change. A need for change and a dream for greatness together inspire the process of creation. When we are ready to create a new lifestyle that aligns with our values and goals, it often comes out of an acceptance that our old way of doing things isn’t giving us the joy or health we crave. We have to take a leap, and whether it’s out of crumbling rubble or simple complacency, the leap into the unknown can be truly scary.

Scary dreams can be a reflection of our daily anxieties, or a reflection of feeling unsettled about something deeper. While we cannot control them, we can control what we feed our subconscious each day. Actively deciding to have hope and to commit to fostering hope through goals and action can go a long way in calming our nerves. Whenever a bad dream like this crops up in my sleep, I notice I've piled on some anxieties that I haven't actively worked to calm or I haven't focused on enough of the good. It's a decision point for me, to decide to focus on what makes me hopeful or excited for the future.

When I daydream about what I want the world to be like I think about a climate that has stabilized and ecosystems that are again growing instead of shrinking. I think about forests becoming healthier, about endangered species regaining their footing in their natural habitats, and oceans returning to health. I think about people, and how healthy and vibrant we would be in a world like that.

If you believed you could be the alchemist of making your best dreams a reality, what steps would you have to take to get there? What's stopping you from starting today?

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Why is Grief so Hard?