Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
– Winston Churchill
Many years ago I had a dream. I would have probably forgotten it, but…
In the middle of the night the city phone near my bed suddenly rang. I woke up and reached for the phone on the nightstand. But the phone rang 2 times and stopped, and by the time I picked up, there was no one there.
I looked at the clock, it was about 4 am, and was overwhelmed by the strong emotional excitement caused by the dream which I had just seen.
In the dream, some balls were being thrown at me, and I was catching them. Some woman was throwing them, but her outline was vague. It was something like a game, I needed to catch the right amount of balls, and then I could go to the next level. I saw a ball coming at me, then another, and another… I remember the feeling of excitement and, at the same time, anxiety that I might fail. One more – and done! – I reached a higher level.
The game continued, there still were many levels ahead, the balls were thrown at me, but at one point, suddenly, a ball slipped out of my hands and fell to the ground, where it shattered, becoming a small mound of sand. I felt crushed that I had failed at the game. At that moment I heard a woman’s voice: “Don’t worry, I’ll throw the balls until you learn to catch them.”
Maybe it was the words themselves, or maybe the way she said them – my eyes instantly filled with tears. And then the phone rang.
The phone rang for a reason at that exact moment. It rang to wake me. And then it fell silent, so as not to distract me from the recollection of the dream.
It would seem that the Higher Powers wanted me to remember this dream.