The Great Awakening: Your Dreams Hold the Key to Your Freedom

First & foremost, why the hell is Kenny Smith in my dreams?! Besides, shouldn't he be somewhere analyzing the 76ers or something. The man should be ecstatic since him and his TNT crew found a new home on ABC/ESPN.

And out of all people, why him? Why not his ex-wife? Now that's a fine lady right there.

The price is always right when it comes to her. Boy, the things I dream of.

Anyways, the dream was about his upbringing as a youngster in which he was the narrator taking me through his childhood. 

During his adolescence, he met a basketball player by the name of Dufrane who played for the San Antonio Spurs. 

He said that he used to see Dufrane shooting around on one of those basketball arcade games all the time.

Here he was, this famous athlete playing a kids' game all by his lonesome.

Nobody was bugging him for pictures or autographs. He was just there by himself. 

The arcade was situated in the back of the arena where Dufrane could be seen shooting around on it before & after and interesting enough, even during the game, though I don't know how he pulled that off.

Kenny was around this guy a lot and even garnered a nickname from the basketball prodigy, Kenny Buckets.

Whatever Happened to Dufrane

This is where this story takes a turn for the worse.

In my dream, I saw a newspaper article that announced the passing of Dufrane.

The article read something like,

"former ABA superstar Dufrane, sans first name, departed this world on his own terms."

What This All Means

The first thing that I blew my mind was not only hearing of his passing but the manner in which he transitioned. It took me a minute to wrap my head around that alone.

Then, a lightbulb went off in my head. Alone! Maybe that's why Dufrane did what he did.

I spoke earlier about Dufrane being by himself and nobody being around him. Maybe that wasn't what he wanted. Maybe he wanted to be around people like Kenny because he was a people-person.

Maybe all of the loneliness sent him off on this downward spiral.

Maybe, he just wanted something better.

I mentioned how Dufrane grew close to Kenny Smith earlier. Now some of you may not know know who is he.

Well, for those that don't, he's a former basketball player now turned analysis.

During his run in the NBA, he played for several teams including the Houston Rockets. On that team, he had a teammate named Hakeem Olajuwon. His nickname was "The Dream." 

The name Dufrane's also interesting because I just had this thought about the character Andy Dufresne from the critically-acclaimed film, The Shawshank Redemption.

Dufresne, played by actor Tom Robbins, was wrongly accused and convicted of killing his wife and her lover.

Even though he was shackled from a physical standpoint, they never got control of his mind. 

Andy Dufresne was always a thinking man and his thinking got him out of a lot of sticky situations.

It also drew people to him which made him popular among the inmates and guards. 

Dufresne doesn't let his tenure behind bars "institutionalize" him like many of his fellow inmates including his close friend Red, played by actor Morgan Freeman. 

He makes the best of the situation he's going through at the time. 

I mentioned how Dufresne was wrongly convicted of killing his wife & her lover earlier.

He always proclaimed his innocence much to the chagrin of his fellow prisoners but there was one that agreed with him, a newcomer given the nickname, "Elvis."

It turns out that the young prisoner met the man that actually did the real crime and informs Dufresne.

Dufresne goes to the warden with the info but the warden doesn't care to hear it because Dufresne has become an extremely, useful asset to him.

He's gotten very rich off of Andy's mental accumen. 

Dufresne, so frustrated with the warden, calls him "uncouth" which the warden doesn't take too kindly to.

He sends Dufresne to solitary confinement and gets in touch with Elvis to further investigate his story.

Elvis repeats the same story he told Dufresne and because of his good act, is murdered in cold blood which Dufresne's informed about.

Right then and there, Dufresne knew his time was up in that place so he begins to plot "the great escape."

After he gets out of solitary confinement, he has a convo with Red about getting out of this place.

Red, who was so institutionalized that he doesn't want to hear it. 

In fact he told Andy, "not to do that to himself." 

Andy ended up telling him that if he ever got out of here to look for a particular rock in a certain location.

Poor Red. His mind was so far enslaved at the time just like his fellow inmate, Brooks.

Brooks was one of the old prisoners who was so institutionalized that he was asking his boss when he could pee. He finally couldn't take it anymore and ended up taken himself out of the game as well.

I mentioned all of these men because they all tie into what my dream was really about; Freedom.

We all want to be free from whatever's shackling us at the present moment.

We all seek our "great escape" from everything and everybody that's "holding us down."

And that's exactly what Andy Dufresne did; He escaped.

The same can be said for the basketball player Dufrane as well as Brooks. 

Now I don't condone nor promote what those last two gentlemen did because you don't have to die to be free. You just have to allow your mind to be free. The mind is your real portal and can take you anywhere you want to go.

If you want to know just how powerful the mind is then just look at Andy Dufresne's situation. 

This man chiseled through a prison-cemented wall with a rock hammer and a picture of Raquel Welch. Now Mrs. Welch has some rocks of her own on her chest but still. That's cement!

The man chiseled his way out one piece at a time.

Then he swam through several football fields of shit to his freedom. And he got his money too; For all of his years of service to that crooked warden. 

You CAN be free from anything that you feel is binding you.

All it takes is time, energy, willpower and a poster of Raquel Welch. 

It's solely up to you to either "get busy living or get busy dying."