Dealing with Mistakes and Catching Up

Last night I had a dream that I was back in the gymnasium of my grade school. We were putting on a show - we were all adults, but we were putting on a show for our parents like we used to do shows back in school.

This one girl I used to be friends with had brought a script that she thought was funny, and put me in it. She hadn't thought much about putting me in it except that I was reliable and would help her with it. What she hadn't planned on was me stealing the show. I didn't necessarily try to steal the show, I just did my part to the best of my ability, and the audience loved it. They enjoyed her part, but they loved my part.

There was a part where the other person didn't give me the right cue, and I had to get my line. Other people were mortified for me, but I wasn't. The guy goofed and I let the house know it. It occured to me that I needed to make us all look good, instead of trying to call out someone's mistake - and mistake is a loose term. He just forgot a line. I was very unforgiving.

My mom was there, watching. She saw how unforgiving I was, and I instantly had this image of that friend who was mentioned before playing volleyball. In sports, everybody works to get the ball where it needs to go, to score, to overcome somebody else's - maybe due to lack of skill or maybe just a simple error - play mistake to make the team look good. My mom seemed to be thinking that maybe it would have been good for me to play volleyball. Maybe then I would have learned that making the team look good was the key - not pointing out how everyone else goofed and that I did all my stuff right, but the overall result was the team's collapse. She seemed to think I was a little hard on myself and other people, and she wishes I would have learned some of that forgiveness growing up.

There have been some other dreams over the last couple weeks, but I haven't written them down. I was hoping I'd remember a couple of them. Well, if I do I'll come back to this. Thanks for listening.