Living the Dream

I remember my coworker, Richard, who, whenever someone asked him how we was doing, would say, “Living the dream!” Of course, he meant it sarcastically, as he was a cynical person with a caustic sense of humor. But little did he know that there’s a lot of truth to his statement. We are all living the dream, and just like any dream, the events in our lives have symbolic meanings that can teach us important lessons about where we are on our journey. Richard retired a few years ago and moved on. I was over 65 when he retired and I should have retired with him, but for some reason I didn’t. A recent event in my dream, taught me why.

A few months ago, my wife dropped me off across the street from my place of work, and I proceeded to jaywalk across the street. Now, I should have known better, since when I was eight years old, a man jaywalked across the street in front of my house and was run over by a truck and died. You would think that would have made a deep impression on me to never jaywalk. But it didn’t. I needed to learn the hard way. I found out later that the man was a tenant of our neighbor and had just had an argument with him about his rent. He was blind with rage and crossed the street without looking just as a speeding truck was approaching.

Before my wife dropped me off, we had been arguing. I wasn’t blind with rage, though. I glanced to my left as I began to cross and saw a truck pulling out heading south toward me. I assumed the driver saw me and would slow down to let me pass, so I then looked to my right at the oncoming northbound traffic, which was some distance away. However, the truck driver was looking at traffic to his right, didn’t see me, and hit me, breaking my right heel. In one other accident in my past, I assumed a car in front and to the left of me had moved while I again only looked to my right. I hit his rear fender. In the third accident, I was exhausted and just looked straight ahead, assuming that the street was a one-way street. In all three accidents, I didn’t look both ways at least twice.

So what lesson did I learn from my accident besides never to jaywalk again? Well, what’s the meaning of looking both ways before crossing? Besides good advice for pedestrians, it could also mean looking at both sides of an issue before getting into an argument with someone. If you just look at your side and assume that the other person sees it your way or moves on, or that there’s only one way, you end up hitting someone or getting hit yourself.

I remember right before my wife dropped me off and I crossed the street that fateful morning, we had been arguing about retirement. My wife is going to retire next May and she wants me to retire with her, but I told her I wasn’t ready to retire. I was only looking at it from my point of view: I love my job and I like the money and benefits. Plus, I would get bored if I retired. I wasn’t looking at it from her point of view. She said, “Well if you don’t want to retire, that’s fine. But I’m going to have fun. I’ll send you postcards from Hawaii and other exotic locales.”

In her book, Heal Your Body, Louise Hays gives the deeper meaning of many illnesses and injuries. I looked up the meaning of a broken foot, and it said, “Fear of moving forward.” So that was another lesson from my accident. I was afraid of moving forward into old age and retirement. I’m like an old racehorse that doesn’t want to be put out to pasture. Ultimately, it’s a fear of dying, which is the next stage of life after retirement. But I’m now beginning to see things from my wife’s point of view and I’m letting go of my fear. I can easily see myself working as a freelance writer and editor for some travel magazine, making more than I’m making now, plus getting all-expense-paid trips to exotic locations. I’ll be sure to look both ways before crossing streets in those places. I hear traffic can be real crazy.