I love my father, but we were from 2 totally different generations. I was from the 20th century, and he was from the 19th. So his values were different than mine, to say the least. He had fought in the 2nd World War, and he was a man’s man, I guess, one could say. And I really respected him, but I feared him somewhat as well.
I could never quite meet his expectations in his eyes. Never. Not really. In fact, I remember I’m from the tail end of the hippie generation. Long hair, I had an earring, etcetera, etcetera.
So one particular day, I’m really working hard to try and build my relationship with my father, maybe I’m about 16 or 17, and we used to tag the end of our sentences with man. How’s it going, man? How you doing, man? Etcetera. So I came home and then my father had arrived home from work and I said, how’s it going, man?
And my father, I guess, had a difficult day with this group of men that he looked at, that he managed, a lot of them really, a lot of areas. And so he exploded in great anger. I’m not a man. I’m not a man. I’m your father.
And I said, oh, gosh. Relax, man. So you could see it went downhill from there. Then, I think I’d mentioned this before, I turned 16. I finally got my driver’s license and I wanted to buy a car.
No way. Young men don’t own cars, and I had the money. And I tried to explain, dad, look, if I don’t have a car, I don’t have a girlfriend. Bad luck for you, Leon. No car and life went on.
You know, but finally, he was very kind to me, my father, but I didn’t quite meet his expectations. But as life went on, he finally accepted me. I wasn’t going to become a vlogger. I wasn’t going to work in the woods, and I did it. I worked for about, I think, 4 summers.
Every summer, I set chokers, and my gosh, it’s a difficult job to say the least. But I did it, and so I accomplished something perhaps in his eyes. But regardless, I didn’t take it on as a career. So I was kind of somewhat second rate, if you know what I mean. I went away and I studied philosophy.
Philosophy. So finally, I think my father was about 80 years old. We finally had the talk. Leon, I know that you’re different than me and that’s okay. And I remember I got teary eyed.
I got really emotional. You know, it’s really one of those seminal moments in my life. And then at 83 years of age, he died. And it was a great shock for me, actually, and I couldn’t sleep. My sleep was totally disrupted.
Now, we know from Freud and from Jung that dreams are a pathway to the unconscious. And, you know, there’s probably a lot of truth to this, really. So my story, I can’t sleep, but then I have this dream. I’m walking along this gravel path, and it’s like you’re in some Monet painting, if you will. The trees are kind of undulating, and, grass is quite high.
And it’s one of those wonderful summer days. And you’re walking along through the field, so to speak. And then in the distance, there’s another path. And I see my father walking along that path, and he’s dressed in a suit. My father always looks spectacular whenever he dressed up, so to speak, and he was a wonderful dancer, which I also was not.
So we walk along and we meet where these two paths converge. And I said, dad, how are you? And he looked at me quite startled. He said, Leon, I’m fine. And he shook my hand, and my father always had an enormous handshake.
So he shook my hand, and he looked at me and he said, Leon, do I look okay? And I said, jeez, dad. You look great. Why? He said, well, people have been saying that I’m dead, but I don’t feel dead.
I said, dad, you don’t look dead at all. And he said, thank you, Leon. And he shook my hand again, and then he walked along the path and disappeared. And gosh, I woke up and I was perspiring and tears were running down my eyes, and I realized that the message of the dream. And the message was obviously that as long as I was alive and my children were alive, my father would continue to be alive because he would rest forever in our memories.
And it was one of those touching moments. So since that time, I’ve kept a dream book and I’ve made a strong attempt to access my dreams, to understand what the mind is actually thinking when it’s in a state of rest. And it’s an interesting thing in a way because a lot of people don’t get enough rest and many of us get enough sleep perhaps, but we don’t, according to a sleep doctor that I saw at one point, we don’t get enough rest and we need to be in some type of deep sleep between 11 PM and 3 AM. And at that point, our liver and our kidneys and our heart, all these organs can regenerate. And then we can wake up and feel refreshed, then you can actually try this experiment.
Sometimes you’ll sleep 10 hours, and you’ll wake up and feel extremely fatigued, tired. You haven’t slept well at all. Other times, you might sleep 4 or 5 hours and you just feel great. And supposedly, this is because when you sleep that little bit and you still feel great is because you’re getting enough rest. So I think that we must spend the time to look after ourselves, and I’ll never forget this dream of my father.
Never. It’s really embedded in my mind. After this, I was able to sleep and I put it all in perspective. So please have wonderful dreams. And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is necessary for great reflection and for great dreams, I guess, and critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.