Last night in my dreams, I was visited by Steve Irwin. I don’t know why he chose to speak to me of all people. Normally, when I have dreams, I can trace them back to what inspired them. If I dreamt about having a terrible time at Jurassic Park, then it was because I watched too many clips from the series on YouTube the day before.
Perhaps it was because I saw a picture of Bindi Irwin’s daughter, Grace, a few days ago on social media. (The super adorable one where she is surrounded by tortoises. You should definitely check it out.)
The dream was like I was watching a documentary, and Steve was just happily swimming across a calm, crystal blue ocean beneath a bright clear sky, enjoying nature. A whale breached the surface nearby. Steve’s voice narrated something as he swam. “Throughout this journey, we will learn about all of the rules of whale songs as they come up. This is because no one whale knows all of the rules.”
In the dream, this sounded so profound and important that I remembered it when I awoke. Then I became confused because what could it possibly mean? Awake, it sounds like nonsense, and maybe that’s all it is, but I kept pondering about it. The words failed to leave me and so I thought and thought about them as I lay in bed this morning.
After quite some time, I think I figured it out.
The whales are meant to be people, and their singing is doing whatever it is they want to do. For me, it would be writing. If that’s the case, what I think Steve was trying to tell me was that people don’t always know what they are doing, and some people may know more than you do, but that doesn’t mean you should stop doing the things you do.
Each whale only knew a few of the many rules to singing, but they all kept singing regardless. The same should be true for us. We should all just keep singing our songs regardless of how much we may or may not know.
I mean, have you ever heard a whale sing and thought it was bad? Every whale has its own unique song and sound, just like we all have our own unique passions and ways of expressing ourselves.
Maybe this was just some random dream and a nonsensical sentence that I twisted into meaning something, or maybe it was a message. Maybe Steve Irwin’s spirit is still out there somewhere, enjoying nature, and doing his best to teach people about all the lessons that animals in our world can offer.
I don’t know, and either way, his message last night still feels important to me.