To sleep, perchance to dream...

Two hours, almost an hour, another two of fitful sleep, ending with a gasping jolt awake by a myth buster.

No, not Adam Savage or Jamie Hyneman, or any of their MythBusters’ team (Tory Belleci, Kari Byron, Grant Imahara - love you guys!).

But the jarring realization it really is possible to dream of one’s own death and live to tell about it.

Maybe the death was not explicitly detailed, but the graphic, very real sense of being in an out-of-control vehicle that hit the wall was vivid enough. The mental awareness of death was certainly there. We even commented on it, Geo and I, as we said our final good-byes.

Speeding. Out of control. Hitting the wall.

Metaphors we use every day to describe the hectic pace of modern life, taken from actions that can lead to physical death if we don’t pay attention.

Thoreau tells us, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I want that, too. I don’t want to reach the end of the life I have left to endure in this physical existence only to realize, at that final instant, that I never truly lived the days, the hours, the minutes which give meaning and purpose to the constant struggle.

And maybe that’s part of it – to stop struggling. To stop trying to contain what is impossible to control, but to at least slow down enough to experience it instead of speeding past, eyes fixed on some distant goal that may never be reached. That journey of a thousand miles is about each individual step.

Slow down and live – another common mantra transferable from the highway to personal existence, another myth busted. There is no inherent need for speed.

And I could really use a nap...