June 22, 2011

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

Washington Irving is credited with authoring the classic tale, “Rip Van Winkle, the story of a man who escapes unpleasant circumstances by sleeping through them.   Similar stories can be found in various cultures from ancient Greece and China to later tales found in Germany and Ireland. Van Winkle, a peaceful man, escapes his wife’s nagging by walking deep into the forest where he discovers a group of men playing nine-pins. As they go about their game, he helps himself to their liquor and falls asleep under a tree. Twenty 20 years later he awakes and returns home to learn that his wife has died.  He is free to begin a new life.

(Bing Images)

I admit I welcome an occasional afternoon nap and think it would be wonderful if during the interval of my sleep the world would find a cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s or that the Israelis and the Palestinians would find a way to live peacefully together. I’m not sure how many years of napping it might take to accomplish these miracles but I’d be delighted to donate a few zzzs to the cause.

Maybe if the human race laid down together for a long snooze, we’d awake to a world that had been given time to renew itself — one where the threat of over-population had been averted. 

Much good can come of a nap, of that I am certain. This afternoon I’m going to do my best for the planet.