Dream Weaver

Last night I had a bad dream. I don't remember much of it, just one part where Guy 1 had Guy 2 handcuffed to a bedpost. Guy 3 was observing, and I guess he knew both the first two guys somehow. Guy 1 took out a large hunting knife and stabbed it into Guy 2's handcuffed forearm as he squirmed and yelled out in agony. Guy 1 calmly, and even with a sense of pleasure, then pulled the knife out and slowly sunk it into Guy 2's rib cage. He did it slowly to savour the pain he was inflicting on the other person. Guy 3 tried to speak up to defend Guy 2, but Guy 1 threatened him into silence. The scene skipped forward a few minutes, and suddenly Guy 2, bleeding from his wounds but apparently not in pain, was standing over Guy 1 getting ready to suffocate him with a plastic bag. At this point I woke up.

My heart was racing and I felt genuinely upset when I awoke. I checked the clock: it was 3 am. The image of the knife sliding into Guy 2's rib cage kept repeating itself in my mind's eye, every time causing me a vague sense of panic. I focused on my breathing, reminded myself it was just a dream, and went to the bathroom. By the time I got back into bed, I was calm again, and I was able to fall asleep.

I don't really know what the hell that was about, but lately I've been thinking about people's capacity to hurt each other. I see it all the time in my line of work, the horrible consequences that people have to cope with when others inflict emotional damage upon them. The vast majority of the time, it's not even done in cruelty, or with malice. It's just the natural consequence of social beings learning how to interact with each other. It's not that we're bad, or evil, or cruel. We just are, and we do what we think we need to or should in any given situation, and each action we take has consequences. "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (Shakespeare).

So why did I have that dream? Perhaps because I was still upset about receiving a flaming anger-ball of rage from a client a couple days ago, and as much as I've tried to learn from the experience and extend compassion towards her, I can't help but feel defensive and angry about how she treated me. I felt helpless and wounded by her behaviour, and perhaps the lesson for me is that I need to remind myself that she is just a person doing the best she can in whatever circumstance she's in. And if doing the best she can still means that she needed to lose it on me, then maybe that's okay, and maybe that says something about how difficult her situation is. So maybe there's room for compassion, for letting it slide, for not taking it personally. Maybe it's that her behaviour was neither good nor bad, but that how I see it makes it so. And maybe I can give her the benefit of the doubt - and take it less personally - by choosing to see it from a place of compassion, not judgment.

And maybe I just need to develop a tougher skin. One impervious to hunting knives.