Don’t Leave the Iron On

A few days ago I dreamt a nightmare involving my late mother. In the apartment where we lived out our family days, we had an elongated black table that spanned the front of a wall-mounted mirror where my mother would sit each morning and prepare her hair and makeup. On this table she would keep her hair straightening iron. Some days, with her mind traveling her multitude concerns, she would leave the heated iron on the wooden table beyond the time of her morning preparation, an action that risked fire. She also did this with pots of boiling water on the hot stove-top. This was another fine point of contention for my parents; the great “you forgot the water on the stove” arguments, those pinnacle dramatics we’d spend our lives in anticipation of.

In this dream, my mother left her heated iron on the black table for two and a half weeks. I returned home one day to find the entire home burnt, walls blackened by consequence of the fire lit by the iron. I woke up around 3:30 AM with my thoughts soaked by the dream, like an all pervading fog. 

I inspected it from its various facets of interpretation, and extracted the abstracted lesson (in my view). The one detail of the dream that stood out as telling was the iron being kept on for two and a half weeks. In reality this would be impossible because my mother fashioned her hair each day, and would have eventually noticed it being on.

What is a thing that is hot, and if left unchecked for an extended period of time can destroy your entire home (in the abstract sense, destroy your family)? That would be unresolved issues. These would stem from your past experiences, embedded in your mind and, as they recirculate themselves in the form of thoughts by the sake of their unresolved nature, entrench themselves deeper. These unresolved issues lock themselves to your mind, like the etched grooves in a record, perfuming each action you take with its essence. Left unresolved long enough, formation of heat is inevitable, and in my mother’s case, took her down good. Don’t think you are above this.

Don’t leave the iron on. Resolve your issues with your partner, family, and loved ones. If you can’t, then resolve them internally by coming to terms with their unresolvable nature, and banish them from concern.