Compassion Part II

I am having a little trouble falling asleep, so I will take the time to write about a dream I had last night. It is symbolic to me in several ways.

In my dream, I was situated on top of a large hill that overlooked a beautiful city. I was looking out through a window into a large backyard area with a very nice pool and statues that surrounded the pool. The dream was very vivid and real -- a lucid dream that I have occasionally. A person came up next to me and smiled and said, "isn't it beautiful? This is one of the most beautiful cities in the world." I asked her what city it was and she replied, "It is beautiful San Francisco."

It was at this point that I realized I was within a dream, but I decided to go outside to explore the city. It was interesting to explore a city within a dream that I have yet to visit in real life. I remember the streets were filled with people and that there were large ports near the ocean area. The sky was completely clear, the sun was shining and the air was clean and dry. I inhaled deeply and began riding a bike down one of the streets while observing the people.

"So this is what west coast people are like," I remember thinking to myself. Something about the dream went further than just my mind's illusion of what I thought San Francisco would actually look and feel like in real life. There was a lot of emotion within the dream -- I felt a sense of freedom and excitement to be able to travel and visit a new place. Even though it was just a dream, it was amazingly detailed and filled with subjective material of great personal significance.

I want to share something with you that means a lot to me. Deep within my heart, I feel an intense passion and desire to travel. My last trip took me to Denver, Colorado, which I found to be an exciting and vibrant place. Denver is a beautiful city and definitely a place I could see myself living in at some future point in my life. The glorious mountain spans, the clean air, the endless activities in which to engage like skiing, white water rafting and hiking.

The world is such a large place. There are more than six billion people in the world. There are hundreds of moderately sized cities throughout seven different continents. There are adventures ready to invigorate the soul while saturating one's senses and desires. There are hundreds upon hundreds of different culinary dishes waiting to be tasted. Among the multitude of museums, there lies nearly limitless amounts of works of art to be viewed, analyzed, interpreted and felt by the heart. There are different types of stones contained within mountains ready to be felt by the hands of a climber eager to reach new heights -- both physically and spiritually.

In this dream of San Francisco, I looked out beyond the streets and beyond the buildings that formed the city skyline. What I saw was something much more spiritual and metaphoric. While my hands were eagerly pressed against the glass, I realized that I was alone. What I began to feel within my heart was a sense of loneliness and isolation. I then asked myself what good there is in traveling the world when there is nobody there to travel with me.

I walked down a street in San Francisco and turned into an alleyway. I called out to her but she was not there. I looked up and saw the movement of clouds as they raced across the sky. I then looked at my watch to check the time and saw the hands spinning rapidly. What worth was there in traveling down new streets when there was nobody to be there by my side?

"Isn't it beautiful? This is one of the most beautiful cities in the world."

I turned around but she was not there. I could travel down every street in the world in a pathetically futile attempt to find her. At night, I'll often walk slowly down different streets and look up at the old buildings in the city. On the upper floors, I'll stare into the dark windows and pretend that perhaps she's in there looking back at me. I'll delude myself into thinking that perhaps that's where we lived for many years and that, in some sense, she was in that dark room sleeping -- waiting for me to come home.

I know why I love to travel to new places. I understand my fascination for discovering new works of art and exploring new streets. In some sense, every place I visit has a piece of her somewhere. Part of the thrill of traveling is the nearly impossible chance that I will see her again. Every art museum I visit gives me the opportunity to look at a painting that might remind me of her in some way. Perhaps a certain flow of yellow crashing into the blue of an abstract painting will cause a flashback of her beautiful green eyes against her dark hair.

I know why I love to go to so many places. It's because I never really had a place I could call home. Home to me is that random window in a building on a distant street within a distant city. A place where she just might be resting, waiting and wishing for me to bump into her as much as I wish she would bump into me.

There are streets, though, that one can never go down. These streets of time are paved with our own memories. Dreams allow us to break through those impossibilities and see days far gone and removed from our lives, but so near and precious to our hearts.

I will never understand how anyone could cheat on someone they love. Love is so hard to cultivate at times. What amazes me most is how so many people actually have someone right next to them, yet could so easily mislead them by choosing to be faithless to their commitment. To work so hard in searching and exploring to find someone to love, only to then turn around and destroy that trust seems so barren to me. If you find someone even remotely compatible -- someone you can have great conversations with -- shouldn't it be one's first nature to never let that person escape your life? Even more importantly, why on earth would anyone ever betray that person? Is a moment of pleasure with a stranger worth destroying a lifetime spent building a relationship and caring for another human?

Yet here I am traveling the world -- for the rest of my life -- to find that one special person that so many others take for granted.

But I do love to travel. It reminds me why love is so important. When you give your heart to someone, you give them your trust. Love without trust was never love at all.

Yet, I read stories all the time about politicians who have cheated on their wife because they were given the chance to keep from getting caught. There is never a possibility of getting away with deceit, because that moment of deception is always there in the back of one's mind.