a race against time

I am at the bitter end coffee house, hanging with my friend Molly and Cody while they ardently yet somewhat frivolously try to get their homework done by midnight. And I am blogging for what it seems the first time in ages. I have two specific dreams I want to write about that have occurred to me over the past couple weeks. One is more personal and one is just...interesting to think about. Sort of "LOST-esque", if you will. Let me describe that one, simply because it happened it last night and it is fresher in my mind.


What do you think about time? Many Eastern religions and fields of thought believe time occurs in a circular pattern, like say, how the seasons come and go in a pattern. They believe life renews itself. Reincarnation is a part of this mindset as well. Life is constant, ever moving, always restoring and replenishing. Western religions think of time in a more linear mode. You cannot take back time that has past, and you can never relive what has already been. Once you die, you die. You have no second chance, and you aren't reborn. Many believe in an afterlife, and many believe death is the ultimate end.
All this to say that my dream involved time, and though I have been trained since a child to think of time in a linear way, in my dream, I could turn back time and not only relive it, but change things.


In LOST Season 5, the people left on the island have a choice to make. Daniel Faraday is convinced that they can turn back time by detonating a hydrogen bomb, and the plane would have never crashed. Others, such as Kate Austen, aren't so sure that it will work, let alone if they will survive it. My question was always: what if the detonation of the bomb is the very reason everything happens the way it happens? What if it didn't matter what they did; that that very act was the cause of their reality?
 
In my dream, a girl named Kailey, beloved by many, drowned to death in a tragic accident while swimming in Lake Michigan. She was very young, and so many grieved that she could so easily still be alive, if only she could have cried out for help. If only she hadn't gone into the water at all. If only. If only.
 
I grieved for her and her loss of life. I remember feeling so sad for the people who knew her, even though I didn't know her at all. I wished I could do something. Then, all of a sudden, time warped and I was in the past again. I knew that she was still alive.
 
Scene change. I was at East Side Baptist Church, searching and searching for Kailey. I asked everyone I knew if Kailey was around. The obligation to tell her of her imminent death in Lake Michigan was nagging me. I wasn't sure if my pursuit of her would change anything, but I knew I had to find her and try to convince her I wasn't crazy.

I ran into a Kailey, but she wasn't the right one. Then, entering through the door of the auditorium, I saw her. I couldn't believe I was actually seeing her. I was going to talk to her, I knew that much. I had the opportunity to change things, and to see for myself if she would live as a result of my intervention.

The attempt to not to come across as crazy didn't work. I was outrightly honest with her, explaining that in the future, she was already dead, and if she didn't listen to me, she would die very soon. I told her I wasn't out to get her and that her life depended on her belief in me, in what I was telling her. I was very persistent, which is interesting because I am not this way in real life. As the conversation progressed and I sounded weirder and weirder, she started to cry. I think it was because I was beginning to creep her out. I don't know why a small person like me would creep her out, as I can't do much damage, but I did. She waved her arms in front of her, thanking me for my concern, but that she is fine and doesn't need my assistance to keep her alive. Tears were streaming down her face and I knew she didn't know whether to discount me completely or take my word for it. She was scared. And from my perspective, if she didn't believe what I said, doomed. The last thing I was able to say to her was that, the day she died, she would win $10,000 from a raffle drawing. I was hoping this part of the future would not change and it could be her way to believe me.

Scene change. She and a whole group of random people were sitting in a crowded conference room awaiting the announcement of the raffle drawing. I was anxious and closed my eyes tightly. When I opened them, I saw her not too far off. This was good, because I knew I still had her within my reach. 

The raffle results were announced. Kailey was the winner. As she received her check for $10,000, we made eye contact and I knew that the raffle was our constant throughout time. No matter how many times we relived the past, her name would have been drawn every time. There were some things that were just meant to be. Unpredictable as human creatures are, often there are constants-things that supercide human decision. Things that are meant to be. Elements of our decision-making is out of our control. The raffle drawing was one of them in my dream, which is ironic because a drawing is one of the more random acts of mankind.

Because she understood that, strangely enough, I was not crazy and was truly from the future, that day she did not get drunk and take a swim. She took it easy and specifically stayed away from the lake. I saved her life, and it was a surreal moment to see her the day after and know that I had just changed the past with one act of graciousness. In doing so, I had also changed the present and future. I caused her, who was dead, to live. In my dream, she was meant to win the raffle all along but she was not meant to die, and it was my duty to change that.

Let's just say I had a long night and was thoroughly baffled when I woke up.