I woke up this afternoon from 14 hours of hibernation. The workweek was nothing out of the ordinary, but I don't think my brain's had the chance to recover from the hecticness that was Bangkok the weekend before. I believe my body appreciated the rest, but a 14-hour slumber was bound to concoct some very strange swirls of dreams.
In the dream that I awoke from, I was in a room, filled with people stuck in prison-like cells. I was a random-faced man, shirtless, as were the other men in the room. All of us were locked up in cells lined up in rows facing each other, steel bars blocking us from physical freedom. It was never revealed to me in the dream why there was a dozen strangers locked up in a room, but I remember feeling frustrated, restless, and my mind felt clouded. At one point, I remember zooming out and having a bird’s eye view of everyone in the room, and as the eye of my dream turned left to look beyond the cage bars that lined the wall, I remember seeing the horizon of freedom that awaited us beyond the prison bars.
Though the details of the dream are a blur to me now (it’s been 15 hours since I woke up), I remember holding the knowledge that, if we all worked together somehow, we could free each other of the walls and bars that held us (by somehow hacking and destroying some long pipe that ran through each of our cells). Yet, no one seemed to recognize that joining forces could bring about this lost liberty. In fact, the segregation seemed to lead each man to think he was responsible for his own life, and only his. I realised that we had all been brainwashed, distracted, and trained to turn against each other and on anyone who would even consider a forlorn attempt at escape.
The dream reminded me of a conversation I had with my colleagues the afternoon before, when we were discussing the twisted state of affairs of North Korea, and the tyrannical hand under which Kim Jong-un ran it. It is said that prisoners of the state who attempted escape from jail would not only be brutally murdered, but their entire families – the generation after them and the generation before – would also be executed. Such are the consequences of an individual’s quest for liberty.
In one way or another, we are all living in prisons of our own. It could be a prison of the mind, the body, or the spirit. It could be a prison of the heart. Whatever it is, it takes courage to step out of the matrix and start living life in the way it's truly meant to be. And sometimes, along the way, you will suffer in your fight towards liberation and awakening; but one thing’s for sure, it will better than living under a false shell of security your entire existence.