An Epiphany

I have gotten into the habit of writing my dreams down in a sort of journal. Over time, I have learned many things about my way of dreaming, including the many patterns and unique ideas and points of view I can have while dreaming. I will often dream in the first person, meaning that I am me, but sometimes have dreams that are merely concepts or neat ideas, or as an omniscient that is looking upon something that plays out like a story. My latest dream is a combination of the latter two, as I am no where in the dream and have received a great epiphany in the act of writing it down. I feel compelled to share it, for some reason.

The dream is about an underground army that calls itself The Caste. It takes place in some imaginary city that I don’t know the name of; it was a desert-type city, nothing at all modern to speak of, and many of the citizens were a sort of dark, but fleshy red color with curly black hair. They were all completely stacked--I mean chiseled and fit--even among the women, and were clothed in colorful fabrics. Water was a scarce commodity, but not entirely difficult to find. I remember there was some type of tiny parasite that lived in the sand all over and around the city that preferred to breed and spread in a warm and slightly moist environment, like some types of mold. Basically, when someone was forced to spend much of their time outdoors, perhaps homeless, the parasite would enter through the lungs or open wounds of a dehydrated person and set up shop, spreading around the body as much as possible and causing great pain to the person as their blood thickened, lungs were starved, and body weakened, until the person eventually died. The best and only way to get rid of the parasite was to very quickly rehydrate yourself through immersion and constantly drinking water. Very odd. This is just to give you an idea of what the city was subjected to.

The Caste was composed of young warriors who had to go through a very strict initiation that I now find fascinating, if a bit brutal. New members, after some preliminary training, would be sent as prisoners to a public yard and be chained to posts with other, actual prisoners, their backs exposed. The general public of this almost savage city were encouraged to frequent this yard as often as possible to witness and participate in the standard punishment that was dealt to sentenced criminals. Citizens and their children would publicly humiliate, whip, strike, and throw rocks at the prisoners exposed backs throughout an afternoon until a certain time when the yard would be closed to the public. The prisoners of that day would then be left to rest there, still chained to their posts, until the evening fell, then they would be cast out of the city for the rest of the night until morning; the new warrior(s) would be among this number of outcasts. In the night, they were all vulnerable to any wild creatures who might happen upon them, as well as the sand-dwelling parasites that lived pretty much everywhere, entering their open wounds with ease. Water was pretty much out of the question beyond the city walls, and a long afternoon of being brutally beaten without food or water would obviously take its toll.

At some point before dawn, a small group from The Caste would sneak out of the city to retrieve the trainee, dead or alive, then begin the long process of bringing them back to a better, healthier state before the real training and fine-tuning would begin.

It seems like an unusually harsh form of hazing for someone to have to go through, especially since the public is at this point unaware that they are beating an innocent person half to death, but the reasoning behind it is very interesting and unique to me. The Caste exists as a relatively unknown society that swears to protect the people in the city from enemies that also dwell underground. They act as the first line of defense against these people(?) and will even give chase if one of them escapes to the surface. They live in darkness, surrounded by enemies that would harm or kill before ever considering an act of kindness, and the “hazing” is actually counter-intuitive. You would think that a person that was beaten beyond all reason would want nothing to do with the people of the city, or that perhaps they would rather look upon them with disdain or with vengeance in their hearts, but that is the farthest from the truth, because these warriors were born and raised in the city. The city is populated by their loved ones, and the loved ones of their fellow warriors, both dead and alive. Here's the epiphany:

Our loved ones, however ignorant of the consequence of their actions, will often become the ones who cause the most pain in our lives. If you can survive and overcome the pain caused by the ones you love, what do you have to fear from your enemies?