When the plane goes down
by Alfonsina Betancourt
photo: @rsanchescarvalho
I don’t remember when was the first time I had a dream, but I can assume that I was still a little girl. Up until this day, my dreams can be quite entertaining, to the point I sometimes wake up exhausted because I have long, energetic visions that seem as I got to relive in my sleep a Tarantino movie on a nightly basis. Other times, these oneiric experiences are nothing short than pieces of wisdom. I receive messages for others, process complex problems and even get to meet cool people and places I have never visited before. I also have repetitive dreams, as well as continuing dreams, complicated stories that are interrupted when I open my eyes as if I had just pressed some kind of mental pause, but later resume as if their plot had been written ahead of time.
Months ago, I had one of those dreams whose wisdom was meant for a friend but up until today its moral still haunts me. I was at a coffee shop listening to my friend describing a story where once on a business trip his plane started going down. He narrated what he did in a very calm way. As he continued talking, I heard a strong voice said something that only I could hear. It was as if I was given the responsibility to ask that question on behalf of the wise, faceless, strong voice.
“If the plane goes down today, who would you call? What things you wouldn’t like to remain unsaid?”
photo: @leio
Those words have haunted me for a while. Could I answer the question?
The truth is we never know when our plane would go down, or when we will be involved in a fatal crash or when a diagnosis would dispatch us from Earth at the speed of a sigh. We don’t know when our last opportunity to speak will be. Still, we continue living as if we had all the time in the world to correct mistakes and start new chapters; to say the unsaid; to express our feelings; to tell people how much they matter to us.
If there is something that death teaches us is the weight of its infinite silence. Although it seems unavoidable, wouldn’t it be nice if we balance it by filling our existence with a finite number of heartfelt words?
Regardless of our beliefs about what happens after we take our last breath, whoever outlives the departed is bound to live with the questioning of what words would forever remain in the terrain of the unknown. So what alternatives do we have? To leave everything behind so we can run with a megaphone to go tell the stories and feelings that haven’t seen the light of day? Or maybe write them on pieces of paper and stuff them inside fortune cookies? Or weave them into poems that we stick on old books until a lucky soul finds them?
Or maybe, we could embrace the possibility that perhaps we should just let our heart speak….today…before it is too late.
photoL @brett_jordan
The biggest enemy of our voice is fear. We are afraid of people’s reactions; of stirring a tsunami of emotions that we won’t know how to handle; of hurting someone; of loving someone; of opening doors that can’t be closed. We let fear muzzle our hearts, but we forget that a voiceless heart has already crashed a long time ago. A voiceless heart is the most similar thing to a heart that has stopped beating.
So, if the goal is to live living, shouldn’t we let our hearts express freely? Shouldn’t we become vigilant ushers at the doors of our heart so that the right words can come out? The truth is that sometimes we need to experience going down on the plane to realize our time on earth is limited. But sometimes, there are dreams that come to warn us and prepare us and in all their absurdity they show us truths that we are unwilling to face. Sometimes it takes a nightly fantasy to inspire us to live a different reality.
“If the plane goes down today, who would you call?
Then that is our cue…make the call, speak our hearts out and live as if words have expiration date. Because the truth is, they do. But we will only find out when we can’t do anything about it. Let’s drive our voices so that when the plane goes down the only thing coming out of our mouths is a gigantic smile. And that is one dream I hope comes true at last.
photo: @cristian1
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