The beauty of suffering.

The dream that changed my life.

I only remember from this point and onwards in this dream.

I was walking in an open grassy area. It was a beautiful sunny day and it felt like I was leaving a stadium or something, as there were throngs of people all around me moving in the same direction. Taking a look backwards I could see the kind of view that you would see in the early stages of a hike.

I saw my “mentor” and called out to him. I don’t remember what his name was and I have never seen this person before in real life. He was not Jewish but rather an Indian man, some sort of Hindu guru. He was dark skinned, mostly bald and sported a thick grey mustache. The strange thing about him was that his head and body were sort of round and totally disproportionate to his arms and legs, which were scrawny and short.

I began walking next to him and his wife who was by his side.

“There was no freedom until March 23rd” he said.

I don’t remember the precise words he used and I’m not sure if he said “there was no freedom” or he used the negative “there was only suffering.” Regardless, I knew that he was referring to the apartheid in South Africa. He also mentioned that the 23rd is celebrated as Nelson Mandela’s day.

“Maybe for some people, but for others there was happiness even before then.”

I said, thinking of the world at large and all the nations in it.

“Additionally”, I continued, “Everyone had their time of suffering.” This I said knowing that I was talking specifically about white people.

I could see on a timeline how there were periods where each nation had their time of suffering. The Whites’ time was long ago.

Side by side, we approached a great, steep, grassy hill. In front of my mentor there was a thin staircase carved out of the hill which he and his wife proceeded to climb. I opted to tackle the hill directly, climbing on the grass itself.

I observed that all along my mentor’s wife had never mentioned a word and I had hardly gotten a glimpse of what she looked like.

I was climbing the hill and thinking of all the great authors and philosophers whose suffering influenced their work. I always felt that as a result of their writing, they harbored grim world views. Dostoyevsky for example, because of his own suffering in prison, believed that pain was the only thing that is undeniable and is therefore the essence of life.

I reached the final grassy hump of my climb. I was suffering immensely from the exertion of the climb and upon pulling myself over the top of the hill and onto the flat and soft plateau, I had an amazing insight. I was wrong about all these philosophers. In truth they were saying that life is so beautiful that it is worth all of the suffering and pain.

I lay on the ground of the summit weeping, having achieved a complete catharsis.

My mentor was still beside me and I followed him into a strange arrangement of houses. They looked like neat ruins on top of the aforementioned hill, which was as grassy as on the bottom.

Following his path I found him sitting in a bath, swirling around some lightly colored potion that then began to dissipate in the water.

That was the end of the dream. When I awoke I knew that I had never met this man in my life. However, I was convinced that he is a real person who lives on Earth.

I am not sure as to why he chose to visit me in my dream.