Nightmares of Heaven

In my dream, I died. I instantly sat up and looked around, where a girl I might have grown up with said, “This is heaven.” Heaven was my apartment. I slid out of bed and walked across the floor, thinking the real heaven might be in the living room. It wasn’t.

“Everything is the same,” I told her.

“Yes, it’s heaven,” she said. I put on my blue collared shirt, tied a long apron around my waist, and drifted across the street to the restaurant where I work. My eyes were constantly focused just a few feet in front of me, thinking that I might see a translucent, shiny wave or a whiff of something supernatural that would prove that heaven and where I lived were not the same place. I stacked sugar caddies on top of one another and tried to smile, glancing nervously around the perfect kingdom. “Forever” put my mind in a jar and shook it.

I woke up for the second time and have been reliving that dream since. It’s among my most unsettling nightmares. I did not wake up gasping for air; in fact, it took hours for the “plot” to fully rematerialize. But I think the dream revealed a quiet terror: that this is all there is.

Last May, I got coffee with a professor of philosophy. We were there to discuss a project I completed about contraception, but our conversation made a hard squiggle toward religion. A Christian man, he mused that heaven is what we give to the universe during our time on Earth, not so much a place. God is the inspirer of that love, and our legacy is our eternal.

“If there is no God,” he said, then trailed off. Steam rose from his rapidly cooling coffee, stitching neat circles toward the ceiling. He sighed. “I don’t think this is all for nothing.”

My dream was the embodiment of the “this” he referred to, and it dwelled solely on the negatives. The bedroom of my apartment had somehow blended with the hospital wing where my brother was kept after his accident. The floor was messy but smelled like Clorox. When I put my jeans on for work, I clipped my belt over the five-ish pounds I don’t remember gaining. At my job, the restaurant was particularly dim. I was even working my least favorite section of tables. Robby and Orion weren’t in my dream, nor were my hiking boots or coworkers or Piedmont Park. My subconscious collected things I’m not happy with and edited them into a flawless reel of imperfections, then projected them on the backdrop of forever.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had both vivid dreams and the desire to decode them. It’s proven immeasurably helpful. Dreams have identified people I should be wary of, risks I wanted to take, and feelings I wasn’t sure I had. After three days of marinating this nightmare in the liquid of quiet contemplation and curiosity, I’ve pulled it out to cook and eat: I need to splatter my days with intention.

I’m not lazy. I wake up at 7 and walk my dog and try to tidy the apartment. When Robby goes to work, I write until it’s time to open the restaurant for lunch. I recently received a certificate of grant writing. I’m navigating ways to start a freelance career. My brother’s old GRE study books have formed a neat pile on a shelf, and I’ve been browsing through grad school programs. I like setting goals, but consistently fail to cultivate the intention that sparks follow-through. Books and certificates are useless without application. Five pounds won’t disappear through dog walks. The points of dissatisfaction that my nightmare so kindly highlighted can all be reversed through intention and work.

I don’t aim for a perfect life; the fragility alone is terrifying. But there are ways I can empower myself. I could start working out every day, and foster connections that would lead to writing grants, and actually touch a GRE book. I know what I can give when I choose to cultivate strength. My dream taught me that I’m slipping toward stagnation and that, though I’m happy, I’m not living like it’s worth my forever. It caused me to reflect on my recent tendency to use words in an effort to change physical and logistical aspects of my life. Syllables move my spirit, but not my legs.

I agree with my professor: this is not all for nothing. And I hope he’s wrong. I want heaven to be a real place where we all dance forever. But I have no control over eternal joy; the only power I have lies in where I cultivate compassion. Putting it toward every person and thing, including my body and spirit and goals and brain, is the highest business of living. Maybe heaven is something I can make.