Notions

Philosophers like to question the notion of good and evil. They ask: but what is good, and what is bad? Are the two mere subjective notions whose meaning varies from one individual to another; from one society to another? Do they exist independently from us, men who possess the faculty to reason, or do they exist because we do? To have a word alone that describes a notion suggests that man came up with all the notions that exist. It seems that in conclusion good and bad are born from our own minds, leading to the thought that such notions must probably rest on what we make of them.

Now take a tree, for instance. Does the tree exist independently from us, or does it exist because we do? Take man out of the equation and the tree is still standing. Tree becomes what it is: a word to encapsulate a meaning, or a description of something that will give others, through a mere single word, an idea or image of what the object is. How strange that when dealing with concrete objects the eye can see it suddenly makes it easier to separate what is from what is named or defined by man through language. More abstract things like notions are harder to fathom.

Could it not be that good and bad truly exist independently from us, though they are not as obvious or concrete as the tree?

Much like the tiny bacteria or the atom we only learned to see through a powerful lens a few decades ago, it may just be that we haven’t yet been able to see such things as good and bad for what they are, beyond subjective ideas we have of them, because our eyes as they stand today are just too weak. Or perhaps we fail to understand that our eyes alone cannot possibly allow us to comprehend every face that makes up reality.

Dreams

I managed to wake shortly after 5am. The sky is a steel blue, the air fresh and eerily quiet for now. I fed the cat, and then rested my thoughts on strange dreams I’ve been having... Such dreams are usually vivid enough for me to remember pieces of them.

The first one was two nights ago, and in that dream I was back in our old flat. You’d think that after all this time away, my memory of the place would betray me, but in the dream, the flat -the building itself- was painfully familiar, and even the detail of nasty neighbours I’d rather have forgotten was there. I wasn’t a kid in that dream, but I’d been playing like one with some boy who was a kid. We got back to my flat, panting from running around too much and the stinky next-door neighbour stormed out of his flat to warn the little boy to be quieter... The flood of emotions I felt within that dream was so realistic... It was the same type of scorn I used to feel for the low-life who used to beat his dogs ruthlessly and let his children stink, wearing dirty clothes - all 5 or 6 of them.

I sneered at the man’s threats but what changed in the dream was his response. He wasn’t fazed by my disdain for him, he laughed instead and pushed his way into my flat to sit on the pink sofa. I was going berserk by then, fearing mum’s wrath when she would come home to find the horrible man in our flat. The little boy was still there, hesitant. I could tell he was very afraid of the balding, overweight man with small, narrowed eyes. I kept trying to have him leave, but he ignored me, smirking. After another moment trying to get him out (I was even holding a baseball bat...) he suddenly leaned toward me to whisper words; words spoken so fast that I fail to remember them exactly, and it woke me up at once. It was something along the lines of “did you know about your father...”
It had to do with a secret, or some secret object that belonged to my father, or something stupid like that. In the end, the dream made no sense whatsoever...



Last night’s dream was a different breed altogether. It was about the black hole within me, or a part of it. It was such a convoluted dream that I wouldn’t even know how to describe it accurately. I saw myself wandering places, even getting to some beach at some point, crowded with people lying on the sand, by the strong waves that rolled against the shore. I was looking for someone I loved. I was so focused in the search - I ‘knew’ who it was only in the dream, but I had lost him- that I could intensely feel the pain of having lost him. It was a remnant of pure love, the crazy type that makes you obsess over a person. Within the dream, I had memories in which I drowned my sorrow, and I kept searching for the guy, in vain. I had memories of how it had felt to be with him, though I’ve never experienced anything like this in reality. Thinking of that imaginary love, the memories made me feel complete, but as I searched for him all alone, I could feel the emptiness his departure had caused in me. I didn’t want to wake up from that dream... I didn’t want to wake up because in that dream, the guy I was looking for was real, somehow, and there was hope that if I searched for him hard enough I could find him again. As soon as I woke up, of course, I realised that it was all nonsense.

Dreams that seem so real that they give you that fleeting hope are the hardest to bear, really. I love and hate them at the same time... I saw his beautiful face, full of love and care, and I longed to be with him again... He felt so real... So real even in absence... I woke up before I could find him, of course.

What I find strange about dreams sometimes, is how you move along the convoluted plot that makes no sense in reality and feel as though it is the continuity of some other backstory... For instance, I would be dreaming about something in particular, and within that same dream there would be remnants of some other, older dream I had in the past as though the latest dream was but a continuity of the other, somehow... It gives you the false sense of it being real.

Where is the beautiful, caring face I saw in my dream? I want to believe so much that he is in fact real, that there is a chance I could find him with my eyes wide open rather than closed...

Reality dictates that dreams are just what they are: dreams.