I've shared a dream that I had waking up on New Year's Day this year with some of my closest friends. It has stuck with me for more half of this year, and it feels just as relevant on Independence Day as it did earlier this year, so I figure that I should share it with you, too. This set the tone for my year, and I want to keep it with me for as long as I can.
In my dream, I was driving around Minneapolis. There was garbage throughout the streets. Street signs were toppled, and buildings were crumbling. As I drove, I started to pass under a large sign - like something that hung over a divided highway - but the sign started to fall. I backed up the car as fast as I could to not get crushed. Chaos seemed to be everywhere.
In the car, I was listening to NPR. (Of course.) And, it sounded like the president had been convicted of some wrong-doing. I couldn't tell exactly what had happened, but the way that the reporter was talking about the president made it clear that things had changed. Maybe impeachment processes were underway. Maybe they'd already happened. In the dream, I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe our country wasn't all crazy, after all.
I kept driving until I came to a park. This park was a giant amphitheater, but, like the rest of the city, it was covered in mangled metal, garbage, and pieces of buildings and signs. It was a mess. I couldn't drive any further since the road was completely blocked. I got out of the car and started walking through the lowest part of this giant dump of a valley. But as I did, I realized that people were sitting in the grass up the sides of the park, peppered between the piles garbage and rebar.
People were just sitting and talking with one another. They were eating lunch and having conversations. I realized that it was actually the people that were pulling the town apart. They were tearing it down so that they could build it back up - together.
I woke up from this dream on New Year's Day and thought, "We need to get to work!"
This dream might be a metaphor and a signal that this is the best time to make change happen in the world around us. For better or worse, the Trump administration has taught us that our government is pliable and not set in stone. We can make of it what we want. There are no more rules or status quo to prevent us from making the change we want to see for this country.
If you could tear any part of this country down and rebuild it in a new way, what would it be? Let's do that.