The Silver Lining of Nightmares

(Reproduced from an earlier blog entry written on December 12, 2005. I decided to put it on again because I read an interesting piece on nightmares by Daniel, though obviously the kinds of nightmares we are talking about are quite different. Here is the link to Daniel's piece: http://mechanicalchopsticks.blogspot.com/2009/04/nightmares.html)

You've had this nightmare before. Each time it may be rendered in a different way, but the primary motif remains the same. In the nightmare, you invariably find yourself staring into an expanse of cold, unrelenting existence which suggests mild hostility. And such a frightening sight, as you always hope to ignore but never fail to notice, has an air of familiarity to it, because it looks so much like the sweet dream you had just moments ago, except that now the environs have completely mutated into something diametrically opposed to the warm congeniality you know so well when things haven't gone awry. You don't have a clear idea how you end up where you are. You only know that being there you feel a stifling sense of impassability. The frostiness that stares you in the face numbs your mind, shrivels your heart, and dampens your spirit all at once. You couldn't believe you would actually be encountering such frostiness. You're not sure you can battle it, because it seems to get tougher every time. You wish you weren't there. You wish your whole being could be transposed to another realm of existence so that you wouldn't need to go through all this -- again.

Coming out of such a nightmare, you feel physically sapped and emotionally drained. You doubt if you could sustain another trial of this kind. You know nightmares are good-dreams-turned-bad, so you feel you want to give up dreaming altogether, if only you could. But then you also know that you CAN'T, not only because you have absolutely no control over the incidence of dreams, but also because it is absurd to give up all dreams just because of the scary ones. More importantly, sweet dreams have deepened your life to a dimension you never knew existed. Without these dreams, it would appear that life is hardly worth living at all.

Nightmares would recur, but that shouldn't make one give up on dreams. The agony of sacrificing all dreams just because some of them are painful far exceeds the suffering of the nightmares themselves. This realization gives me an important insight into God's love for humans. God never gives up on us even though we could be His nightmares, because the "agony" of giving us up and having us isolated from Him just because we're not always the way He wants far exceeds the "pain" of Him seeing us go astray in and of itself. God created a relationship with humans built on love, and although it might be speckled with imperfections, it is certainly a bond too intimate and dear for Him to forego. In this light, God's ceaseless love for us makes perfect sense, because why would He, being all-intelligent, take a more painful option? The bond between God and humans embodies a love so intrinsic and deep that He will not sacrifice it even though it is being constantly compromised. His love remains unshakable and unmovable no matter how wrong things go, because only that -- not giving up -- will bring a much better outcome.

Despite the nightmares, I'll not give up on dreams: because in what seems to be an interesting parallel, they remind me of the ceaseless, unfailing love of God in all its sanity and profundity.