By: Jim Taylor

Valentine's Day ain't what it used to be.
           Once upon a time, if I dreamed about being naked, I was probably having an erotic dream.
           Not any more. Perhaps it's an effect of aging.
           In later years, I still had dreams about being naked. But mostly as a complicating factor in a dream about writing exams, giving speeches, chairing meetings. Where I didn't have a clue about what to write, what to say, what the meeting was about.
           Usually I didn't even know where the event was taking place.
           Nakedness, I suspect, symbolized my lack of preparation. It's hard to bluff your way through a situation with no clothes on.
           But as life changes, so do dreams. I haven't dreamed of being naked for years. Why bother? Not even in my wildest fantasies can I imagine that Sophia Loren see me as a sex object now.
           Over time, erotic dreams morphed into deadline dreams. I was lost, in a strange city, often a strange hotel. Floor plans kept changing. I couldn't find my room, let alone my possessions. And I had to find them - because I was desperate to keep some kind of an appointment. The ship was sailing. The plane was leaving. The curtain was going up. My wife was waiting.
           I usually woke in a panic. It might take several minutes, in the darkness, to reassure myself that it was just a dream, that I still had time to accomplish whatever needed doing.
           Now that I don't face as many deadlines, my deadline dreams are more gentle. I'm more likely to forget my room number than to find that my entire floor has vanished, that the stairways have been rearranged in my absence, or that someone else has moved in.
Although I still find myself scrambling to locate lost clothing or papers, to gather everything up, to get it stuffed into a suitcase.
           Sometimes I find a lot of other people's baggage inside that case already. I don't know how it got there.
           It's never a new suitcase, I've noticed. Usually an old brown leather case, with straps and clasps and little sliding lock tabs, the kind of case that bitterly resents being closed and batters my knees when I try to carry it.
           People who do dream interpretation would probably have a field day identifying the symbols in my dreams.
           Personally, I don't think any single dream offers earth-shaking insights. But the progression tells me a lot. I don't have to prove myself any more. I don't have to struggle up the ladder of success. I'm beginning to recognize when I'm living someone else's agenda instead of my own.
           I don't recall ever catching the boat, or plane, or taxi I was in such a rush for. Perhaps I'm not supposed to.
           Perhaps that will happen only when time itself runs out, when I have no more deadlines to meet or Valentine's Days to celebrate, when the ride I'm catching takes me out of this existence.

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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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