Such strange dreams of late.

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Last night I dreamed of my uncles and grandfather.  What was it the men in my life taught, how did they direct?

While adopted, that was done while I was quite young.  I knew no other family.  The same for my older brother.  Both of us were obtained when we were a month old, perhaps just slightly older for him.  Not only were we accepted by our direct family, of course, but by our extended family.  We didn't know we were adopted by the time we "knew" most of our family.  Our mother didn't hide the fact, made sure we knew when we were able.  But children don't understand such things until later.

We actually had two grandfathers, both were met.  One we only met once, or a few times, for for a short time and when I was quite young.  I only remember some things about him.  The other might have ended the same, save that as his health declined it was decided that he would live with us.  And he did so for a year or two, or so it seemed to me then and now.

He could be grumpy, but mostly he liked us boys.  At that time, my mother had married a man with five children of his own.  Grampa's room was our safe place if all else became rough, even if our mother became too much.  She... was still his child.  :)  Oh, she hated that then.  And yet she has turned into the same kind of grandparent type that he was.  An old Yiddish saying suggests, to women, if they live long enough they will become their mother.  A Doom saying is, live long enough, on top of that, become both your parents.

The thing, in my dream, generally, was what to do in life.  And the tone by which life should be lived.  My grandfather, through the dream, suggested a cautious weary advance.  Marry, but think about it.  Get an education, and a career, or figure out how to make money as certainly and safely and legally as possible.  Tend to your wife and family, just know you can only take out what you have put it, which at best isn't much.  By having them... that is where you should gain any real treasure.  Don't expect, sometimes, even a thanks.

My uncles, many of them, had a notion of getting ahead, far ahead.  Grab what you can and run like hell.  Don't worry about tomorrow, it's all about today.  Don't worry about family, they will make it or not, you just move on if it gets complicated.  Live and die for the day.  Don't advance, too risky.  Don't work too hard, unless it suits you.  Money, money, money, with it you don't need love.  Yeah.

I never did abide my uncles, if the world I live in didn't really offer much else.  Their generation seems to have gone insane.  If I have one uncle that married only once?  Maybe, if so, also one aunt.  Neither of them were known to me, pretty much, at any time in my life.  None, that I knew, had a full career.  None were wealthy, that I knew.  One aunt and uncle lived a life pretty hidden from my knowledge, at least until I was well into middle age.  One has now passed.

It isn't judgement, only an understanding.  Blame?  Perhaps my uncles' generation were trying, one last time, to get ahead.  In a time, though, where the powers that be were doing what they could to undo them?  As they are today, even more so.  The secret is that life is hard.  The good old days were just as harsh, it's just people didn't jabber about things as often.  People only knew their own, and perhaps a few other, hardship stories.  Now, everyone seems to know everything about everyone.

Is it better?  Has telling everything helped?  I am not sure that is the problem, it is just a difference between now and then.  There is some good to it, and some harm.  The real difference is that, now, people more generally know that life is full of knocks.  Although I think, as some freak flags are flown that shouldn't, there is some degradation from it.  Yeah, I am guilty.  And I... have shifted tack a bit.  Mostly.

I was always on my grandfather's side.  I just didn't have voice then or all that much power now.  It's not that I hate my uncles, either.  I just think they went far astray, and were lead that way.  I am hoping for a return to the old ways.  Humble?  Yeah.  A blessing that is lost on many.  Pride for false worldly gains.  A hunger for things that will pass rather than for simple rightness and strong hands from honest work.

Just... things from the dreams.  I haven't been able to sort it all out.  I am still a bit raw from sleep.  But... there you go.  I think it was a good dream.  It helped me sort some things that have been troubling me for... decades.  Probably won't mean much, in some ways, in my life, at this point.  But it might... give pause to young folk, should they happen upon this.  No matter, it's out of my head so that it can begin a new project?  Maybe.

Later.