Photo by Tim Umphreys on Unsplash
Some people have a lot of nightmares, some say they have a few, some none. I’m between few and none, but the ones I have are “doozys.” They are terrifying enough I will not watch nor read Horror, though I greatly regret that exclusion includes Stephen King.* (*all references at the end of the post above the Comments section.)
When I was too young (I’m still too young) to watch Horror I went to a black and white movie about a dinosaur like creature who invaded a city (probably New York). The “good guys” shot at it, but its drops of blood were infectious. That night I had my first remembered nightmare and woke myself up screaming. My father came in the room with a lit candle, a pool of light around him, his familiar face and counted on strength immediate comforts.
It was my mother who asked me at breakfast about my dreams, training me in recall. My Great Depression raised father was an ESTJ on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)* …nicknamed “the steamroller” because they have the facts (S), logic (T), make decisions (J) and take action (E). If he told you something you could count on it being “the gospel truth.” At his funeral I described him as the “rock on which I built my life.”
My father sat on the edge of the bed and said “You’ve had a doozy of a nightmare, honey. But it wasn’t real.” He patted my shoulder, and, copying my mother’s breakfast conversations, asked me questions so I could tell the story of my nightmare. When I asked, “Why is it called a nightmare?” he chuckled and said “It’s a black horse you are riding through the night.” Since I was reading Walter Farley’s the Black Stallion series* over and over, that familiar image helped a lot. But it was his chuckle that made the frightening feeling go away. He waited to leave until I was edging back to sleep, his tenor voice softly singing his favorite songs. Kay Starr’s Side by Side* was his theme song:
“We ain’t got a barrel of money, and maybe we’re ragged and funny,
but we’ll travel along, singing a song, Side by Side
Don’t know what’s coming tomorrow, maybe it’s trouble and sorrow
But we’ll travel the road, sharing our load, Side by Side.
Candlelight and Being Human
General associations to candlelight include:
- Elegance as in candlelit dinner table
- Celebrative as in a birthday cake or Halloween pumpkin
- Religious holidays as in Advent and Candlemas, in the Menorah
- Observance as a message of witness when placed at a memorial
- Prayer as in “I’ll light a candle for you”
- Appreciation as in gifts of special, maybe beeswax, candles
- Hope
When our lights go out in a storm we have stored candles, and we gather around the table where they are placed and read aloud to each other. There’s a feeling of the darkness surrounding us, but we are warm in the light, in the sound of the words flowing, creating imagined images.
One of my favorite moments at a concert is when the whole venue space, dark except for the stage area, fills with people shining a lighter or their cell phone – thousands of “candles” expressing a shared feeling among the community of listeners.
Nightmares in External Realities
For many people on earth these are nightmare times. Even the most biased news will name the places where people are suffering, terrorized by glutton, pride and lust demons.
Many people are in a house or place of work or on streets where their lives are nightmares. At times their nightmare is created by us trying to “get the person to do the right thing” or whatever our phrase is. We might choose to stop being torturers. At times these nightmare situations are created by cynics bordering or fully criminal. And at times by socio and psychopathically ill human beings with inhuman motivations.
How to Survive a Multi-year Nightmare
Viktor Frankl was an Austrian Jew providing psychotherapy with hospitalized suicidal women when German Nazi’s put him and his whole family in concentration camps. He was in four camps at different times, and he lost his entire family.
After WWII Frankl invented “logotherapy”, a humanizing psychotherapy different from his predecessors Sigmund Freud and Viktor Adler. He wrote Man’s Search for Meaning about how he survived the camps. It was one of the most influential books in the USA in 1991. (George Bush was President, and that year was the collapse of the Soviet Union.) For me it was a book about how to survive when you have nothing but your inner self – even your outer actions are governed in a nightmare from which you cannot wake up.
Here are a few quotes that tell us what is necessary when in such an extreme nightmare:
- Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, man is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on the lips.
- Everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
- When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.
- Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.” This idea connects directly for me to T.S. Eliot’s “still point” in Burnt Norton.*
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
My father came into my nightmare with a candle, created a still point between the stimulus and response. He taught me a response, a way to ride a nightmare.
Just before I came to edit this blog I read Dana O’Driscoll’s post* on paper wasps inhabiting her greenhouse – for a whole season – two nests, one at each door. She chooses to sit still, then to advance gradually into a relationship. Her exploration is an excellent story about choosing to live at the still point when confronted with real danger.
When a Spotlight is Needed
For external nightmares of this scope a far brighter light is necessary. Certain organizations are devoted to shining a bright light on nightmare situations. The hope is that by bringing the situation “to light” it will shift the conditions and causes and stop it. I believe nightmares need witnesses. I rejoice that organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross/Crescent, Carter Center allow people to go into nightmares as healers bringing hope (or at least food and bandages). I praise emergency workers fighting fires and wheeling patients into hospitals. Shine those Spotlights.
I love the stories that sneak into the news about neighbors helping neighbors and strangers. I believe and know from experience these stories are everywhere and happen all the time. The actions in “Pay it Forward”* stories light and warm the heart instead of terrorizing it. If these stories were the main subject of our news screens and social media, we would be filled with hope for the human race rather than despair. We would be constantly encouraged to step up and do our part in helping each other turn the wheel of life.
I am limited in my ability to shine spotlights or act in noble endeavors inside active nightmares. Rather than despair, I exercise my freedom of choice to send money, personal letters of protest, and prayers.
And, since not serving to spotlight on world level situations, I choose to light a candle in smaller, personal ones.
Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash
When Candlelight is Needed
We might notice a need because someone is screaming in terror from their nightmare. Or we might attune ourselves to observe the small nudge or prompt inside us to act, to carry a circle of warmth and soft light to the dark night of someone’s soul.
I am teaching myself to Notice candlelight moments:
- To recognize, embrace and remember the moments of joy, of shared laughter, of agreement, of comfort.
- To notice those in my circles of friends and family who are in a dark space and offer my support to help lighten it. It’s hard to reach out when inside a nightmare.
- To recognize and shut up when someone is trying to tell me something important to them. I want to bring my father’s startling patience and interested listening, seeking to fully understand the other’s experience. And to ask small, warm questions on my side of the conversation.
I am taking small actions that might cast a circle of warmth and light:
- Sending a card, a call, an offer for coffee, listening, sharing.
- Opening the curtains slightly in a dark room.
- Saying hello to strangers in my line or seated next to me – recognizing another human.
- Singing a song, telling a story, reciting a poem that comforts.
- Touching base with the friend that keeps coming to mind. I have a friend who weekly calls a life-sentence prisoner who has no external support.
- While listening, asking the question that allows the story to unfold.
Side by Side
As we travel our roads we are offered multiple situations where we can bring light. I believe it helps if we encourage – even provoke – one another to do good deeds, to love rather than hate or despair. Let us encourage one another.
In any dark place where you are, offer a gentle and warm light, to yourself first, and then to others who have their own nightmares.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine
Oh, this little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.
Let it shine, all the time, let it shine.
All around the neighborhood I’m going to let it shine
Hide it under a bushel? No! I’m going to let it shine.
Your comments are welcome. You confirm, challenge or expand what I am writing to you about, and by doing so expand my heart, thoughts, and courage.
References
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- Stephen King, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King
- Myers Briggs
- https://www.goodreads.com/series/49696-the-black-stallion
- Side by Side song by Kay Starr
- Pay it Forward, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pay_it_forward
- Viktor E. Frankl
- T.S. Eliott
- Paper Wasps Care and Gratitude on The Druids Garden, Dana O’Driscoll
- This Little Light of Mine
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