I had a dream the other night. We were sitting alone in our rooms, all of us, every single one, when suddenly —

The walls just fell away. There was no sound, no pyrotechnics; with a quiet resignation, all the matter in the world, except for our warm, breathing bodies, fell down into the void, leaving us floating purposelessly, naked.

And we all looked at each other, as the psychic frameworks that we etched into the streets, into our homes – our routines, our beaten paths, all the conventions that existed not in the world, but in the world as it was seen within our heads – as that framework suddenly lost its grounding, leaving nothing but bare consciousness. We were not alone. We were all there, together.

Then, quietly, as a wave of understanding flooded over us, some of us started smiling, laughing. Without a spoken word, there was a collective understanding of our predicament. The invisible walls in our minds had come down, exposing us bare to the rest of the world. More and more people joined in — not the children at first, as one might expect, but the stuffy, overworked adults, then the seniors, then...

No, all the kids with things to prove held out. For a few minutes.

It was odd to be there with the rest of the world, having nothing of substance but each other. How easily we trap ourselves in worlds of our own creation, when all we have to do to avoid the curse of loneliness and simply remenisce on the dream!