Flowers in my dream and a lesson in radical acceptance

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Editor's note: I would have easily believed that I was living through one of the worst phases of my life, except that I had a beautiful dream just before I woke up in the morning of what I would have labelled a very bad night. In my dream, I had gone back to the apartment complex where I had lived with my parents as a teenager and young adult. There was rubble and dust from demolition near our flat. I looked away in distress. In the same dream I returned a few days later to see that the area around our flat had been redeveloped to create a garden with colourful rows of different flowers. I looked at the window of my room. Sunlight was streaming into the room that I had remembered as dark and cold. It had a new, cheerful view now. I felt joyous in my dream. A gloomy darkness had been washed away with light and colour. I woke up to another day of difficult decisions and complicated logistics. “It’s a time to steel our hearts,” I had …