Dreaming of change.

I'm beginning to grudgingly accept that all that psychobabble about dreams is true. About how dreams provide insights into the workings of our subconscious and all that jazz.
I've been having some very vivid dreams lately. They range from idiotically bizarre (playing football in a condominium construction site built in - get this - outer space!) to the poignant (mending bridges with a recently deceased, estranged aunt) to pretty fucking terrifying (can't remember the dream, thank goodness).
The dream I had last night though, is the one that really makes me wonder whether my subconscious mind is trying to tell me what my conscious mind refuses to accept.
This is what I dreamt about.
I'm driving a car up a steep, winding mountain road. On my left is a wall of rock. On my right, a sheer cliff with an endless drop. The road basically corkscrews its way up a mountain. It's dangerous and full of gravel. My car doesn't have traction.
Yet, I'm pressing on, full steam ahead. Tyres screech as they fight for purchase. My heart pounds away in fear as time and again I almost fly off the road.
I'm getting closer and closer to the top and I gun the accelerator even harder. Eventually, the expected happens. I lose control and veer off the cliff.
I plunge down into the murky depths. And I wake up. As I wake up, I realise that my last thought as I'm falling is not one of fear or terror. As I fall, I'm thinking that this was expected. That I knew I would fall from the moment I began the ascent.
That dream sums up my fears and insecurities pretty well actually. Let's face it. I'm doing very well, career-wise. In fact, I think it's fair to say that I've never been in better shape as a journalist.
The problem with that is that every mountain I climb, every small triumph I savour, is replaced by an even bigger mountain, an even greater challenge.
Before I came on the AFPF fellowship, the fear was whether or not I was only a reporter who could cut it in his own backyard. That I wasn't really as good as I imagined myself to be.
Coming here, I proved to myself - as well as to the folk back home - that I may actually be a half-decent journalist. Well and good. But now that I'm going home, it means that I'm going to have to take everything I've learned here, all the stuff that I've picked up and somehow try to apply it to a Malaysian setting.
I've got to go back and be an even better reporter than I am now. After all, that's the entire point of the fellowship, isn't it? The mere thought of it tires and depresses me. Won't there ever be a time when I won't need to prove myself to the world, and more importantly, to myself?
The nagging thought at the back of my mind though, is whether I'm actually doing any good at all. Whether my work is, even in a small way, changing the world.
That's all I want in life. I don't really care about money or fabulous things or whatever. I just want to, corny as it sounds, make the world a better place. Even if it's just one tiny little piece of it. I want to be remembered one day as somebody who made it just a wee bit brighter.
I was listening to Playing For Change's cover of Peter Gabriel's Biko in the car today. The song, about the martyred South African anti-apartheid activist, was one I've been listening to over and over since coming here.
I don't know why, but when I heard it today I got goosebumps all over my skin and tears just sprang to my eyes. I mean, think about how great a person has to be to inspire people to write and sing songs about him? How tremendous must his impact be for folk to still be recalling him more than 30 years after his death?
As a journalist and a writer, I have the opportunity to make an impact too. Most probably not the kind of impact the Steve Bikos or the Mahatma Ghandis of the world. But an impact nevertheless.
The question though is, am I doing so? Or am I so afraid of moving out of that cocoon of financial and career security that I want to challenge and change neither myself nor the world around me? If that's the case, wouldn't it mean that my life has been a wasted life? After all, what good's a life if a person has come into and left the world without making even a little bit of a dent in it? Surely as humans, as the stewards of this realm, we have been entrusted with greater responsibilities?
Even as I ask myself these questions, I know that I know what will happen in the future. I'll go back to Malaysia, surround myself with people, places and things comforting and familiar and slowly but surely slip back into the old routine.
I'll tell myself that all this idealism is not practical, that I'm a poor boy with aging parents and no silver spoon in sight. I'll tell myself that the responsibilities to family and self come before any notions of honour, nobility, glory or martyrdom.
Eventually, I'll euthanise myself into actually believing most if not all of it. And the only place where I'll face the truth is in my dreams.