I dreamt of swimming

I've been swimming laps for about forty years. I don't often remember my dreams. I wish I remembered my dreams all the time, no matter what the dreams are about.

Last night, I dreamt of myself swimming laps in a outdoor pool when it was dark outside but the pool, of course, was lit.

I also dreamt of a large polar bear that used to be at the Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, MN. The poor polar bear had a small, cold pool alongside its designated space. That poor bear swam in an elliptical pattern endless, all day long. I never went through that zoo without seeing that polar bear endlessly making his small elliptical run, again and again. And again and again. Usually people gathered with their kids to watch that bear.

I could not bear to watch that bear. If I paused and watched him take just one of two laps in his, maybe, 15 foot pool, I swear I would feel that bear's despair, his lost mind that moved him to swim in a tiny space, over and over and over.

I wanted to ask that bear's keeper, but never found any bear keepers, if the bear stopped to eat. It must have. Even bears driven insane by their captivity have to eat.

Around and around that elliptical pattern, all in the water. He would stick his face out of the water at the same point of each lap, to get air.  Polar ears gotta breath.

As I dreamt about that polar bear endlessly looping in a too-small-for-it pool, I suddenly was swimming myself in a dark pool, with some lights overhead. My pool was 25 yards  The pool I was in in my dreams was cold. Between the darkness and the cold, I was disoriented.

And a message came to me:  keep going.

Then, with a kind of pop, my dream ended and I realized I had been dreaming of myself swimming up and down, up and down. As I actually do just about every day. Only not in the dark. I swim in a clear pool, for realsies, during daylight.

Was that Como Zoo polar bear keeping going, seeing no other way forward but his elliptical spin around his very cold pool?

In real life, whenever I saw that pool, I could not look at that swimming polar bear after the first time. I sensed he had lost his mind, or whatever the bear equivalent of losing one's mind might be. His eyes showed torment and his perpetual motion all day seemed like desparation, as if he were trying to swim back to his real life.

I am trying to swim back to a life I never have lead, swimming to a state of love.