I don’t have dreams of Matt very often, but I had one the other night. I dreamed that Matt came back from the dead, but he wasn’t quite the same, somehow disabled. He wanted to play the guitar and perform. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go since he didn’t know how to play the guitar but, I went along with it because it was something for him to do. So he got up in front of some audience– it was a talent sort of situation– with his guitar flat on his lap and started picking out a song and singing. It was actually much better than I was expecting although not that great. Then when he was done he started telling jokes. He told one that was dirty and the Director of Elementary Religious Education of my church was there and she kicked him out for inappropriateness. We left and everything was very serious, but the joke itself was actually really funny and self referential to the dream itself. (I can’t really translate it from dreamland but it involved laughing at our own fears represented by a scorpion.)

I woke up and thought a lot about the joke and the dream. How often do I stress with fear over failing at something that isn’t actually about doing the thing right but about finding the right audience? And when the trying it out should be fun? This is a lesson I know well from myself and from watching Matt.