In my dream I played chess with a dragon. I can’t remember who won, but the dragon was nice, but then he got angry (I think maybe because he lost the match?) and he went on a rage, so we had to reconcile with each other and talk again.
It has always been the same model: slay the dragon. In life, you’re faced with dark forces that try to discourage and to disempower you from living the life courageously: suffering and rejoicing just the same. This dragon that tells you that it’s not worth it, that you don’t know, that you don’t deserve happiness because it’s all fake and we’re all doomed by death. And even if some of this is true: we are doomed by death, some happiness is fake, but this is not the whole picture. I wonder how come the myths never taught us to make peace with the dragon (maybe Gilgamish offered it friendship to Enkidu and they fought the monster together, which is different model?). To invite him for coffee or her for tea, to sit under a tree and talk about the difficulties of being a dragon, the difficulties of facing a dragon. What is truly fascinating is time. At the beginning, there’s no trust and both retort to the defensive stance of attacking, of raging and of hurting. With time, sitting under the sun for long enough until the tea gets cold, or playing a chess match can break the cycle. Because you see, the dragon is part of you. It’s part of yourselves: we humans so good and so bad at the same time. Grey brisk movements of the brush on the canvas of life. So maybe one has not to kill the dragon, to face another dragon and to face another dragon. Maybe one has to make peace with the dragon, to get on its back and fly towards the unknown- the horizon. Surely you’ll meet other difficulties on the way, but this time the malignancy is not your dragon. You’re whole with it and you squint as you climb the hill because of the sun rays as soon as you reach the top of the mountain, you smell the breeze of sweet lavender planted on the doors of what’s truly and always Good, and you inhale.
AICHA BINT YUSIF 