I had an interesting dream last night.
(Note: The only thing that I find more boring than someone else’s dream is the person that tells them, so I apologize beforehand).
I was at a work event composed of two start-up companies I have worked with recently. This event was to improve large, will all employees on deck, and was designed to solidify their culture. It was being held in San Francisco (the location of an upcoming Writer’s Conference I will be attending).
The attendees were millennials and the urban cool, and the instructors were mostly Tony Robbins’s types—high powered motivational speakers. But one of the speakers was an older, silver-haired Japanese gentlemen dressed in a white robe, standing quietly next to a white board surrounded by only a few people. His name was Mr. Tonka.
When I approached Mr. Tonka, I bowed first and he reponsed by bowing back. Then, after looking me in the eye, he placed two post-it notes on the board, saying, “If you want to get to there, you must focus on here.”
Next, he pointed to the starry sky with one hand while holding dirt in the other (yes, we were instantly outside by this point—it was a dream after all!), and he said, “If you want to reach the heavens, you most focus on the ground.”
He then wandered off in the crowd, and I spent the rest of the dream (unsuccessfully) trying to find him.
Now in my dream-mind I knew instantly what these comments meant: Having a big goal is fine, but to achieve that goal you must be in the present, you must focus in the present, and you must act in the present. In fact, the bigger the goal, the bigger the need is to live fully in the present.
It’s advice that ripples throughout both Eastern and Western Philosophy. It is reflected by such sayings as “Isolate the present” (Marcus Aurelius) and “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” (Lao Tzu). It’s a concept that I know well…but knowing is not necessarily doing.
And I think that is what my dream, via Mr. Tonka, was telling me: You have been distracted (granted that distraction has been a hip replacement surgery), but now it’s time to get back on task and to focus on the present.
Thanks, Mr. Tonka.