SAVING THE WORLD

This is the dream of a woman, a social worker who has had a lifelong devotion to helping people who were down-and-out:

It is a foggy night. I am standing near an old post office. I am driven by a great urgency to mail a package of letters which contain crucial information. These letters, in fact, are going to save the entire world of all the unnecessary pain and suffering that people endure. I am terrified that this most important mission on earth will be intercepted.

At last I mail them. Then I anxiously run down an alley looking for a safe place to hide. I see a man walking slowly toward me. I am terrified he will find out about the letters. He calmly approaches me and tells me that he thinks what I had been contemplating has been very brash.

Now I get up my bravado, cockily informing him that it was too late-- I had already mailed the letters. But in a very nonpunitive tone, he suggests that I don't understand the consequences of my actions. With mounting defensiveness, I maintain that I certainly do -- I am saving the world. The man challenges me, protesting that it is just for the purpose of growth that we go through pain. Reflecting on this, I suddenly get what he is trying to say. I go through a complete about-face. I am convinced that it is essential to our evolution that we live through our suffering. I am struck by the realization I have been totally wrong to try to short-circuit that process for people. Now I am desperate to get those letters back into my possession. As I run up the alley to the post office, I experience myself surrealistically rise off the ground, as if I am running on air.