One Dream to Change the World.

Hey ya'll 

An old friend, with whom I've admittedly not always seen eye to eye with, posted a message on my Facebook account recently. In it, she told me she experienced a rather lucid dream where she and I were walking down the street. As we made our journey down a nondescript road, she began to realize that something was different around her. The advertisements on all the billboards, the posters plastered in front of all the shops, were catered to non-straight people. And she realized, all of a sudden, that she been suddenly transported into a world where the heterosexual matrix no longer held sway. I suppose it was all so disconcerting to her, and the feeling was all the more compounded by the dream's lucidity, and suddenly she began to understand what it was like to live in a world where she was the obvious minority. Everything that she had taken for granted to apply to "everyone", day-to-day things like advertisements and the sorts of messages/ideologies they carried, are not as "universal" as They would like us to think. 

The dream ended there, or if there was more she did not tell me, but it was eye opening enough to cause her to do something about it. Firstly, to tell me about the dream. But more importantly, to extend a hand of support. She told me she admired my courage, for being who I am, indeed for even just living, in a world that is so much structured in a way that I am not. It cannot possibly be easy. Indeed, it is hardly ever. At the end of the post, she said, "I may not always understand you, or what you are going through. But I want you to know that I am now for you." And that said it all. Because that's what we really want isn't it? We don't need the whole world to understand us, or what makes us tick. Heck I've known my family for my entire life and I still don't know what makes them tick sometimes. What more an entire community! All we're asking for is the same acceptance and community that is extended to everyone else, regardless of race, sexuality, gender, or culture, as fellow HUMAN BEINGS. 

The post was removed several hours later, despite garnering a flood of "likes" from fellow Facebook users, and when I tried to search for her account to thank her personally, I realized that the following user no longer exists. I don't know what happened, and I could be reading too much into this... but if, for whatever reason this might have happened, I would just like you to know; that I may not always understand your point of view, or are able to accept all you have been taught to believe. but I want you to know that I am for you, and other's like you. People like you make it possible, for people like us to be courageous. People like you help make things a lot easier, make us feel a lot less scared. But most importantly, people like you give us Hope; the most powerful thing anyone can have in the world. Hope for a better future, Hope for a brighter tomorrow, Hope of acceptance, Hope that all our dreams and ambitions are more than just that. Whether we know it or not, Hope is what powers many of us and pulls us through when we are at our lowest. People like you, have given us that. It is never too late to extend your hand of acceptance, regardless of whether or not you currently understand. I do not, for example, have to understand everything about your spirituality, to know, accept, and embrace you as a fellow human being equally deserving of the same rights and dignities I have. 

Thank you.