Tag: fear

The Wide Receiver

I once met a man who’d been a wide-receiver.

We’d gone through a new acquisition. Marketing asked me if I wanted a job. He was the Director of Marketing, and my new boss.

Our business was coronary and peripheral catheters. I was just learning the business. He took me to hospitals. We’d watch procedures. He’d explain things and introduce me to people.

We spent a lot of time on the road, and learned things about each other. He’d been a wide-receiver in high school and college. Small, he’d been fast, quick, intelligent, and disciplined. Good route runner. But as he progressed, he encountered competition from other wide-receivers. They were faster, bigger, and stronger, and just as intelligent and disciplined.

Eventually, he left that field, but he loved football, so he became a high school football coach. Through it all, from the first spark of desire, running was what kept him going. He ran five miles every day. One night, while sharing a bottle of wine with our dinner, he confided, “I run every day, because I’m afraid to stop. I’m afraid that if I stop, I won’t ever run again.”

I think of Jon tonight because I thought, I need a break from writing. Like Jon, I’m afraid, that if I take a break, the seed that defines the essence of who I believe I am will dry up and crumble.

 

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Us

Can there be us, if I can’t see what you see, and you don’t hear what I hear, and you fear what might be, while I strive for what could be, and you worry about what could be, while I worry about what might be, and we can’t understand what the other understands, and the present and the past are broken mirrors of success and failure?

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A Dream of Reassurance

The dream leaped into chaos. ‘They’ were trying to become organized.

First, we were working in packed offices. All were dressed in dark blue utility uniforms and black jump boots. Men and women were present, but no children, and no elderly. Thirty people were using office space planned for ten people. I was upper middle-management, which afforded me more freedom and space. While the majority worked at two rows of tables, side by side by side, elbows to assholes, my space was in the back. But  the filing cabinets, telephones, and coffee fax machines were at the front. I was required to go forward to get what I needed, and then go back via a narrow row. The two people in charge would often be in that narrow row, talking, planning and consulting, forcing me to wait and fume with impatience.

So I began thinking ahead about other things that I could do. I knew, in the dream, we would be leaving soon. We would not be able to take much. There was something confusing in the dream about carefully cutting our pockets from our shirts to make quasi-gloves to protect our hands, and wearing strange netting as leggings to protect our legs.

The order came to pack up. Confusion and noise levels increased as we, and thousands of others, left our offices and crowded into a marshaling area. I followed all the instructions. Inspectors went through to see how everyone was doing. My activities impressed them, which amused me.

But horror struck me after a while. I realized that I’d done as instructed, and had packed my laptop into my luggage. My God, what a mistake, I thought. I was distraught, believing, people handling the bags will rip me off. I’d never see that computer again, and all my work on it would be lost.

At that point, I began stirring from my sleep, and the dream. As I did, a voice said, “Don’t worry. You’re not going to lose anything. You still have everything you need.”

Just before I left the dream, I was given my wheeled black travel bag. I opened it, and there was my laptop. I awoke, pleased and relieved.

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