Getting A Grip

Have you ever had those times where you sleep for a good amount of time, quite close to what your mind and body considers a good session of sleep? During these times, when you go ahead and agree with what your mind and body assesses and sleep a few more hours, do you notice that you get a really vivid dream? I wouldn't know if the folks in psychology are aware of this phenomenon, but it has been happening to me a lot, spread out through the twentysomething years of my life.


Most of the time, these dreams stick out and are still in my memory, but quite a handful of them have any significant value to me. Take yesterday, for instance. I slept at around 9, Friday the 12th. Woke up at around 5, Friday the 13th, and apparently dozed off again.


Suddenly I was in a taxi with my brother Kip, and it seems as if we were on our way to Brent School. It was pretty normal until I felt that the driver was a total jackass who wanted to take us around in circles for us to pay more, much like some jackass taxi drivers here where I'm at right now. Jerks. Anyway. As far as I remember, this driver wanted us to pass through the Post Office and down General Luna from the Victory Liner station, instead of passing through Engineers' Hill. We forced him to go through Engineers' Hill, and he seemed to comply. When we were approaching the fork of General Luna, Brent Road, and Leonard Wood, he wanted to go DOWN Leonard Wood instead of going up the obvious choice of Brent Road. We got pissed, and the driver pulled over in front of Red Lion, over at the junction.


I remember jumping out of the taxi, opening the front passenger seat, pulling the guy out and smacking the hell out of him, slamming him against the taxi, and giving him a good few punches in his fat stomach. For a moment I was hitting him with all I had a lot of times, and then I suddenly stopped, noticing my brother was just watching, and that the driver was just sitting down now in the passenger seat, taking every blow without punching back.


Now, ever have those really vivid dreams where you wake up crying or laughing? I woke up breathing heavily. Then it hit me. I could have kept on going, or I could have stopped. I started it, and I could have ended it there, or I could have ended it when the driver was seriously injured. If I had no self control, I would have gone for the latter, no regrets.


Self-control. That was the moral of the story, the lesson of the dream. If had had self-control in other recalled regrets in my life, I would have avoided them, and I would have known more about what I could continue to do, instead of what to avoid doing. More commendations, more motivation, less regrets, less lessons. I'm still trying to understand the beauty of delayed gratification, against the disaster of immediate pleasure.


I find it timely to talk about this, especially as today is February 14th. Self-Control, people. Yes, this is coming from a guy who had more regrets than pleasures out of seeking immediate gratification.


"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."

- Galatians 5:22-23


God bless us all.