For example, I am having some night time dreams that feel like premonitions. These dreams are ones where I am grappling with the fall out of a great societal calamity, a change to the laws and social order, imperfect though they are now, but completely unworkable in the near future with personal drastic results for the vulnerable, especially within my own family. Or the dreams are of the nature of my experiencing the results of an unpreventable global war, my being called away to fight in a long-suffering intolerable mess that drags on for years until I am ultimately capable of getting reunited with the remnants of my family.
I know, especially having written them down, that these dreams could be seen as manifestations of my age old anxieties and difficult emotions surrounding my insecurities. I've literally spent years writing about them in my blog. Still, it's hard not to feel like maybe they actually portend something terrible. Logically speaking, I suppose it is possible they could even be both premonitions and irrational emotional expressions of my current state. The universe is a mysterious place.
But, the strange things is that, at times, I allow myself some emotional space to admit, for hope's sake, that these dreams may not be premonitions at all, finding the small feeling of hope telling me that my dreams are symbolic rather than temporal. Maybe, for me, the future both in the physical world of 'here' as well as in the 'hereafter' will not be as bad as I think. Maybe my fears have created their own reality to justify their existence.
With that said, it doesn't take a genius to see the world struggling with dark forces and negative behaviors that could result in a lot of global regret and overnight calamities arising from a few poorly timed choices and miscalculations.
I'm caught in the middle. As I said before, I feel like I am waiting for some kind of shoe to drop. I told my mom today that I had always tried to avoid failure, but maybe what I should have been doing was trying to build success, the one being passive and inert, and the second being proactive. The two are not the same. My finances being an example of passive avoidance versus active exertion.
If I make friends with God, allow myself to change belief into behavior, and acquire the practical virtues of patience, long suffering, wisdom, and restraint, maybe I will feel as if my life is turned around for the better. An old man needs hope as fish need water. The world does not need another bitter old man waiting around for an end and the elusive dropping shoe.