I woke up this morning after having what seemed like a very long nightmare. I was in a cold sweat. I’m not someone who dreams often or remembers dream very well. But this one is still vivid in my mind.

I’m not going to describe it since I don’t want to re-live it. I’m sure the scenes from a movie I must have seen in the past. I often think about the things I’ve seen and wonder how it could affect my life.

I don’t remember specifics, but I think about memories during the Vietnam War. And I remember how my Mom and Brother reacted to those scenes. My brother would cry and say "don’t send me to war". In fact, he is very pro-military. He has always honored my service in the Army. And he has two sons who went into the Marines. But he never did himself. It makes me reflect back to the Vietnam War. I still see those images that were popularized in the media. I can’t imagine the horrors. And being in the Army myself, I gravitated toward movies like Platoon and Apocalypse Now. Scenes from those movies are still etched in my memory.

Then I think about horror movies I’ve seen. I was never one who was fond of those movies. My Mom loved them. There was one that scared me to death. It was this doll that would terrorize and kill people. The final scene was one that haunts me today. And reading books like The Amityville Horror still makes my mind race. Oh and the Exorcist. Wow! I wish I would have never seen those movies or read those books.

Even worse, like the Vietnam War, are things that happened for real. I think back to medieval times and scenes from the Bible. My curiosity always gets the best of me. I remember in Junior High School, I stumbled on a book that talked about torture and experiments done during the Holocaust. I can’t fathom how far humanity has stooped in the past. Reading about the Bataan Death March and POW camps in the Philippines. It can’t get much more horrible than that.

Once we were driving to Toronto from Detroit and a body somehow ended up on the highway. It must have happened moments before we came upon it. I can’t take that scene from my mind. Its something I’ll never grow callous of seeing. It has nothing to do with being tough or weak minded. Its the reality of our thoughts. And those thoughts can’t be erased. Yes, when we are awake we can condition ourselves to distract and move on. But when you’re asleep, your subconscious has a mind of its own. We have no option but to live it out.

I wish all of you peace of mind. Please be protective of your own thoughts. And seek help if it ever becomes a problem. I’m certain our dreams and nightmares are the cause of lots of problems in our lives.