CSelf

Good Dream or Bad Reality?

"Trevor: Did we fall out of our story into someone else's story... again?
Sypha: Silly. It's all our story."

I just finished watching the third season of Castlevania, and I was struck by the metaphorical undertones in the episode called "The Good Dream." I feel like we all want to live the good dream in a sense, but as Trevor says, we end up falling into others' stories to get there. Is that a requirement for personal growth or transcendence? I am thinking the producers of Castlevania certainly think so.

Stories... histories... identities... humanity - what is it all for? And what happens when the good dream is not realized, or when the dream is a nightmare or simply utter aimlessness? Can one create a good dream by willing it to be so? Are only certain people destined to live out the good dream, or is it latent in all of us, and we just don't realize it?

My uncle died today. Did he ever live out the good dream? If I had decided to ask him this question, would he even know how to answer it? Would I?

The good dream isn't something I can competently intuit for myself, because I feel like it's like saying the good person, or the good life, or the good story. Good is good, but is good really good? Bad is bad, but is bad really bad? As Shakespeare (and those before him) penned: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

What is the intersection of the good dream and the bad reality? Humanity?

If so, then it would seem we are always destined to fall into others' stories until we actually figure out how to reconcile our own.