Dream Story

This story came to me in a dream. I am not sure, however, how much of it I actually dreamed, and how much of it I made up while trying to recall it. There are also parts I am sure I made up afterwards when I awoke, but I am not going to tell you which parts are which. I don’t know what it means. Whatever you see in it is as valid as anything I could say about it.

Once upon a time there were two friends, who had happy families and good jobs that enable them to support those families in a comfortable and prosperous life style. Eventually they both lost those jobs, because of economic forces they could not control and did not understand. So they bought a boat with most of their last remaining savings, and started sailing down the river that flowed through the middle of town. They asked for work in each new town they came to, but they could never find any. Gradually and frighteningly, they ran out of money bit by bit, and then ran out of food. They began to slowly starve, as did their families back home. Finally one of the friends could stand it no longer. He parked the boat at a dock in a medium size town, and began to bewail his lot.

How could the world treat him so badly, when he had worked so hard all his life? Even if he was somehow at fault, why should his children suffer so badly, when they were too young and innocent to have done anything that deserved this kind of punishment? He continued like this for hours, paying no attention to his traveling companions attempts to comfort him, or to the deeply moved crowd that had slowly gathered around them both…