Last night I had a dream that I (1) downed a pint of some hard liquor (I never had a sense of which kind) in a Costco parking lot, (2) in my inebriated state proceeded to enter said Costco with an armload of garbage from my car (including the empty liquor bottle), and (3) left garbage in various Costco displays, and attempted to exit the store without paying for the new items I had shoved in my pockets (I don’t remember what the items were).
As luck and Costco’s inventory control would have it, I got busted for shoplifting. Interestingly there was no punishment for it; I just had to go find the store manager who happened to be a good friend of mine in real life (he is not really a Costco manager, but very interestingly he really is a hard drinker in real life), talk to him and get his blessing to walk free and leave the store.
I was very buzzed in the dream, and it felt very real to me. More fascinating than that, though, at no point in the dream did I feel any guilt, shame, or remorse for getting drunk at a Costco, nor for dumping garbage in the Costco, nor for stealing from the Costco. My overwhelming attitude during the whole dream was, “Hey, people make mistakes. I made a mistake; that just proves I’m human.”
Sometimes you need to have a ridiculous dream to be able to practice self-compassion. By the way, I woke up before I ever found my Costco manager friend.
Bike Newbie 