Lest you think I talk too much on the subject of dreaming, here i go again.

Last night Ben and I saw Alice in Wonderland. We thought it was just wonderful and beautiful and fantastical and whimisical and adventurous and all the words my friends say I overuse.

At 20 years old and on the cusp of an arranged marriage to a nasaly, red-headed boy, Alice finds herself back in Wonderland. She is convinced it is a dream and that she controls what happens, because afterall, it is her dream.

At a point early on in the "dream" Tweedle D. and Tweddle Dum get snatched up by some scary bird. What happens immediatley after that is significant. For the first time in the movie, the perspective of the filming changes. Alice, for the first time, is no longer the star and we no longer see through her eyes. All of a sudden, we see an arial view of Wonderland from the perspective of the two fat, weeble boys, hanging helplessly from the claws of the Red Queen's evil avian minion. And consequently, Wonderland gets a lot bigger.

I was struck by how strong my reaction was to this (seemingly insignificant) perspective change. For me, it signified that this new world is in fact another realitiy, not merely Alice's dream. Because as much as I love night-time dreaming, there is one shortcoming. You are always the star. I don't know about you, but I have never had a dream from another person's perpective. In my dreams, the 'realities' of those around me relate back to me somehow. Nothing happens in my dream that I am not aware of, because after all, I am creating it. Although I am not limited by the things that limit me when I am awake like gravity and logic, I am limited by myself. Nothing can happen outside my own imagination. The world in my dreams, as wonderful and fantastical as it, only stretches as far as I can see.

The thing that I couldn't stop thinking about for the rest of the movie was how beautiful awake dreams are in that they are so much bigger than the dreamer. I love thinking about this tiny piece of the world that Sseko is creating. That right now, in Uganda, there are 7 beautiful women sitting together, having conversations and and laughing about things I will never know. They are experiencing life and seeing things that I might never see. They will go on to lead lives and impact their communities and country in ways I could never imagine. I love that Sseko is now a part of Julie's dreaming and adventuring. That she will look back at the time in her life when she up and moved to East Africa to run a company and love some girls. To think about the role that this season of adventuring will play in the journey of her life. To think about people around the country, even world, that have been touched in some small way by the dream of Sseko and are now having conversations and dreaming and schemings of their own. That from a small spark, they will go on to create and dream up things I never could.

That is the beautiful thing about dreaming when you are awake. You dream. And then you let go and the dream gets bigger than you. And that dream gives way to other dreams of other dreamers that you will probably never know.

And the best part is there is no waking up, because you are awake and the dream lives on and the dreaming gets bigger.