What Dreams May Come

2009 February 21st

I try to always remain peripherally aware of the story of the wife in 'What Dreams May Come' starring Robin Williams. It portrays an important concept that can be applied to life quite often. The wife in the story arrives to the afterlife sometime after she has lost both her children and her husband to accidental death. She believes she is in hell. Robin Williams goes to her to accomplish the (almost) impossible task of getting her out of there. It almost goes wrong; he almost becomes trapped by his own belief that he is in hell as well.

We all live our belief. Even if we know that, consciously, it is extremely difficult to awaken ourselves from our dreams. We often continue to play the same role and play by the same rules and repeat the same life, day after day. Of course there is dissatisfaction with that. And we look up to the sky, and we look to our lovers, our worlds, and we ask for change to come to us.

Gandhi said that what we would change in the world, we must first change within ourselves. He understood that the world I see and live in, mirrors me. What I love is there, what I am dissatisfied with is there. A quote from me is, "You can see who you are in what you love. You can see who you are also in what you are most bothered by." The mirrors can be powerful tools. They are windows into ourselves.

In the movie, as Robin Williams comes to believe he is in hell as well, the empathy and love within his wife glows brighter, casting off the darkness she'd accepted for herself. He had become a mirror to her darkness. Her love for him wished wonderful for him when she could not bring herself to wish wonderful for herself.

Ah, the old mirror trick.