We pass much more time racing the clock to arrive at our stations in life than we do to enjoy personal moments. When we get to work, some sadistic principle of physics sets up the slow timer for the remaining seven to ten hours.

What stands out in memory? It is not the crisis of Thursday’s report, the processing of forms, the wording of copy, the meals ordered and served on a restaurant shift, or the hammering of nails. In the short term, we remember these details, then move on to new daily assignments. But memory is also built of key moments, not of pain endured while supplying the job market on a daily basis. Memory is selective and photogenic. The best of what we remember is the quality time, which passes quickly through the decades.

As ceremony becomes lost, the sense of time and events unravels. Rites of passage, events that once held paramount importance in the marking of human time take the back burner. A birthday is now celebrated with the purchased time and trailings that the day job can afford. Sometimes it is impossible to mark occasions with the synchronization of the universe. Any moon or no moon at all lights up the makeshift gathering.

Internally, not too much has changed as we are running on our individual clocks, which randomly synch up with industry. Perhaps that is why, aside from monetary gain, commerce throws in the special occasions. We stay on time if we maintain our Christmas, Easter, Birthday, Mothers’ and Fathers’ Day obligations. We shop and fulfill some needs; the economy is satisfied with our participation, then we can move ahead. We discipline our internal existence to hold up our end of the work ethic. It ensures our safe passage through days.

The conscious mind glides along within the prescribed routine until a haunting set of circumstances or an image rises out of a dream. Within the mystery world, which taps the well of experience, where do the faces of strangers come from? How can we arrive back into the driver’s seat as the car speeds along the edge of the mountain and how can we accomplish the deed of guiding the Mario Monkey safely through the passages?

Are dreams the hinges that can permit the luxury of resetting the clock?

Addendum:
What if those unknown events and faces in dreams are memories we carry from our first moments of consciousness, from the time when we were babies and everyone thought that we possessed nothing of memory building?