I had a dream recently that I was standing at the side of a field looking over fresh-turned soil in the early morning. There was a light haze in the air between me and the low hills of San Timoteo Canyon and the light had an unearthly quality – glowing and alternately dim in odd places. Placed carefully over the field were rows and rows and rows of white teacups or small bowls. My job was to fill each cup with a certain amount of liquid. All of them. These freakin’ cups were spread across the field as far as I could see till the distant ones were a grey blur in the early light. There was a small cluster of cups near me that were filled but most of these cups were empty. I just looked at that field and felt the weight of that impossible task. It was impossible. I thought, “This job can’t be done; will never be done. I’m not doing it any more.” Then I woke up.
As I thought about this dream and talked with a couple friends about it, my thoughts about those cups have shifted. At first, I thought this my way of telling myself not to work so hard at impossible tasks. That’s a good interpretation, but then I started thinking about the people I meet every day – all those wonderful cups that could use a little filling. What if it’s not such a burden to say something happy, to smile, to sing … to just be me – could that fill cups? Yes. I think the answer is yes. But that still only takes care of a small fraction of the cups out there. Then I thought, what if I could do a rain dance? Then quite a few cups might be filled with that good deluge. Now I just need to figure out how to do a rain dance …