To the Land of Dreams I Run

To the land of dreams I run,
When the day makes off with the sun. 

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28

There comes a time, as the last embers of daylight are swallowed by the abyss of night, when I relinquish my hold on waking existence and flee to the land of dreams. It’s not merely a retreat but a necessity, for when the day makes off with the sun, it takes with it all pretence of certainty, and I’m left stranded in the twilight of my thoughts.

Sleep’s never been for me a gentle surrender, a quiet submission to restfulness. Instead, it’s a passage fraught with unease, as though I’m a fugitive pursued by unseen forces, desperately seeking refuge in a world of shadows. To the land of dreams I run, but it’s never clear what awaits me there. Am I to find solace in the embrace of sleep, or will I be met by the spectres of memory, twisting the past into new horrors?

There’s something deeply existential about the act of sleep. It is, in essence, a daily rehearsal for death. Each night, I close my eyes and relinquish my consciousness, casting myself adrift upon the dark waters of the unknown. It’s not an annihilation but a suspension – a liminal state between being and non-being. And what’s life itself but a series of such states? We drift through time, caught between past and future, between hope and despair, between waking and dreaming.

Descartes, in his Meditations, questioned the very nature of reality, wondering if the world he perceived was but a dream, a grand deception orchestrated by some malign force. It’s a thought that has never left me. In my dreams, I walk upon shifting sands, where time warps and reason bends, and I wonder: could it be that this is the real world, and my waking hours are the illusion? Or is it that both states are equally insubstantial, as fleeting and fragile as mist before the dawn?

Sleep, we’re told, is the body’s restoration, but for the soul, it can be a battlefield. The mind, unshackled from the distractions of daylight, dredges up all that we have tried to bury. The past, like a vengeful ghost, finds its way into my dreams, reshaping itself into grotesque forms. Old wounds are torn open, whispered words of betrayal echo in my ears, and the weight of all I’ve lost presses upon my chest like a stone upon a grave.

There’s a passage in Job that speaks to this torment: ‘When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint; Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions.’ (Job 7:13-14). How cruel it is that even in sleep there’s no true escape, that the mind, in its solitude, should conspire against itself!

And yet, I still run to the land of dreams. Why? Because there’s no other choice. If wakefulness is a world of cold realities, then sleep, at least, offers the possibility of something else. Perhaps tonight, my dreams will be kind, and I’ll find myself walking in sunlit fields where the past cannot follow. Perhaps I’ll see faces long lost to me, hear voices that the world has silenced. Perhaps, for a few fleeting hours, I’ll not be myself, burdened by all that I know and all that I’ve suffered, but someone else entirely – free, unchained, unafraid.

Plato, in his Republic, spoke of the allegory of the cave, in which men, chained from birth, mistake shadows on the wall for reality. To them, the light beyond the cave is an inconceivable terror, a blinding force that they cannot comprehend. And I wonder – are we all not prisoners of our own waking existence, mistaking this world for the true one? If so, then perhaps the land of dreams is not merely an escape but a glimpse into something beyond, a world that our waking minds are too feeble to grasp.

I run to the land of dreams because I must. Because in that strange, ethereal realm, I might find, if not peace, then at least respite from the ceaseless march of time. And if, one night, I should run so far that I do not return, then so be it. Perhaps I’ll wake to find myself in a world more real than this one, where the sun never sets, and where all the shadows that haunt me have been cast away forever.