The Dream of a Lost Paradise

I had a dream last night that I was on vacation in Costa Rica with my parents. I was my present age, but through some time-shift magic possible only in dreams my parents were much younger. We were staying in some resort, with tropical plants and foliage everywhere, and warm tropical sunshine that made everything warm and lazy. My dreams are like novels in that they always have to have a source of tension, even if it is completely artificial. You know: it’s like the dream where you are back in high school and you can’t find your locker, or you show up in class and find that the teacher is giving a test on a subject you know nothing about.

The tension in this idyllic setting began when it suddenly occurred to me that I had to get to the airport to catch a flight back to the U.S. In fact, I had been so unaware of the passage of time that I realized with a growing sense of urgency that I may already have missed my flight. I ran into the airport and rushed to the front of a line of people boarding a small aircraft. We all stood there quietly in the heat. The flight attendants were handing out sack lunches to people in the line. A Latino man next to me in line stood back to let me pass, but I realized that I was being rude and motioned him ahead. He was dressed in a white linen suit, and seemed comfortable in the heat and unperturbed by me as I had pushed ahead of him. I waited to receive my sack lunch, and was about to board when I saw that the plane was only a small courier with seats for perhaps 20 people. What had I done? I was at the wrong plane, and had used up valuable time. Clutching my sack lunch, I ran away from the gate back to my hotel. If I could find my tickets, I would know what plane to board.

My parents were in their room, comfortable and untroubled – watching something on T.V.. "Hi mom and dad," I said striding quickly past them. "Where are my tickets?" Without waiting for an answer, I began going though the dresser drawers. "A ha!" I pulled out the ticket jackets that I had used on the trip down and looked inside them. There were no tickets. "Of course," I thought. "The jackets only have the ticket stubs from my last trip. My new tickets will be issued at the counter. I have to get back to the airport!"

Forgetting that still didn’t know my flight number, I started to leave. My dad looked at me and asked why I didn’t just stay with them for a few more days. I could just fly back with them. I thought for a minute of what a simple solution this would be, but for some reason I had to know whether I had missed my flight. I nearly ran out the door. As I walked across the lawn of the resort, a short Costa Rican woman came up beside me and started a conversation. Where was I going in such a hurry? "Well," I explained, "I am afraid I missed my plane, and I need to get back to the airport."

"This is so beautiful," she said, waving her arm at the tall flowers and leafy philodendrons around us. "Why would you want to leave at all? Why don’t you buy me a drink, and we’ll just sit here for a while and talk." She was thin and pretty, wearing a flowered sundress, and her black hair was cut short – like Hale Berry’s. I saw her in perfect detail, and as I stood pondering her proposal, I felt the tropical sun draining away my anxiety. We sat by the pool talking about nothing in particular, drinking something cool and fruit-flavored. Suddenly, as if waking from a slumber, I realized that I had been delayed again, and that my plane must surely have left without me. Despite the company of my seductive new friend, the cool drinks, the beautiful surroundings, I was once again overcome with an urgent sense that I had to leave. There was no specific reason, other than that I had scheduled a flight, and might now have missed it.

I awoke without resolving my dilemma. I never found out if I had indeed missed my flight, or even what flight I was supposed to have taken. I didn’t take any of the possible courses of action offered to me that would have allowed me to stay and still return to the U.S. later. The novel ended unfinished, with my anxiety about the return from paradise unresolved.

When I have dreams that are both vivid and continuous, I always spend some time reflecting on what the story and the imagery meant. Surely dreams are a window to the subconscious, and the anxieties they present are the ones we are aware of, but cannot articulate in our waking lives. In this case, the dream was not about a fantasy love or about a reconciliation with my parents. (There are always issues to be reconciled with one’s parents.) I decided that the strongest theme in this novel was the tension between my own misplaced anxiety over a missed flight, and the seductive warmth and escape from my responsibilities – represented by a tropical resort. The resolution to this tension could have been found in some compromise between staying and leaving, but yet in my dream I presented myself with only those two alternatives. The fact that I rejected all that my fantasy resort had to offer in order to pursue my anxious quest tells me that this was a dream about a lost paradise. It was about the impossibility of an escape from the responsibilities and anxieties that fill my life.

Herman Hesse once referred to the dream of a lost paradise as "the worst and most ruthless of dreams." That is exactly how I felt when I awoke. I had been presented with a seductive promise of a warm and carefree place, and chose to abandon it for no rational reason, only to satisfy an internal anxiety about a flight which I could not identify but which I felt I must take. I wanted to write about this because I felt that it said something about my life, and perhaps about my culture – that the dream of a lost paradise came in the form of a metaphor that symbolized freedom from anxieties, and perhaps from all the unwanted responsibilities of an ambitious life.

The metaphor is seductive for what it promises, and it is ruthless for the impossibility of that promise. Do I long to sit by a tropical waterfall; to skip my buzzing pager across the lagoon; to have only the word "sunset" written in my daily planner; and to dwell in a small white cottage under a lighted Christmas palm? Of course I do! Can I? It is possible, yet within this dream lies a deception. Total freedom from responsibility does not bring what it promises. I have met American expatriates in Baja and Costa Rica trying to live the metaphor. The ones who do it best take on new projects, and new responsibilities. The ones who do it worst are the early retirees who burned out and fled their lives. Having left their responsibilities behind them, they must confront their own boredom – a struggle that seems to lead to dependence on alcohol. I would not exchange my life for theirs. My dreaming mind rejected this possibility, and now my conscious mind knows the reason. The metaphor is better as it is dreamed than as it is lived!

Still, if I dream that dream again I think I will re-write the story. I will spend a few more hours by the pool with the exotic dark-haired woman; go to the beach instead of the airport, and fly home with my mom and dad.