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I met a dead man in a dream a few nights ago. I don’t know who he is, but I have a feeling I’ll meet him when I die.

I’ve had death on my mind a lot recently. I’d like to say that I don’t know why, but that’s not entirely true. I’ve had death on my mind because I’m afraid of dying — and there’s a growing part of me that fears death could be closer than I think.

I’ve never wanted to die, but I’ve always believed I had many decades yet to live. Lately, though, I’ve felt a horrible, gnawing fear of imminent death. This terrifies me, because I don’t want to die. I haven’t lived yet.

I don’t know who the dead man was, but I know he went to a lot of trouble to find me. He somehow asked me to come to a small place — a room which seemed like the waiting room of an old railway station — which was the only place where the dead and the living could talk.

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I can tell you how to fix yourself. I can even tell you what’s wrong with the world around us. But please don’t ask me to fix myself.

We’re all held prisoner by something. I didn’t understand this for most of my life. I was blind to the chains that have held me — and most people are blind to whatever is holding them prisoner, too.

Most of us aren’t held behind bars. It’s not iron locks or chains that hold us. We’re held captive by invisible things in our minds and hearts. False beliefs. Self-limitations. Fears. Confusion about what we really need in life. And we’re mostly blind to those limitations. We see how other people are held back. We notice how our friends self-destruct. We even think we understand how the world needs to change.

But most of us are blind to all the ways in which we’re locked up tight in chains of our own. And even though some of us finally see our chains — and know we need to change — it’s easier to try to fix others. Or change the world.

So we hide our problems as well as we can — even from ourselves — and we lecture others about how they ought to fix themselves. I‘m really good at that.

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I wonder whether I disappoint other people as much as they disappoint me.

I really don’t know. Maybe I would be unhappy if I knew the truth about that. Maybe I wouldn’t want to know. All I know is that I keep being disappointed in people I’d like to trust. And I don’t know whether that’s their fault or my own.

I grew up feeling disappointed in most people. It wasn’t their intelligence or their abilities that disappointed me. I could deal with those sorts of things. I was disappointed — and hurt — by people’s values. And especially when they didn’t live up to their values.

When I was about 11 or 12, the pastor at our church was having an affair with my next door neighbor’s wife. My sisters and I played with that couple’s daughter and we spent a lot of time in their house. The mom sometimes drove us to school. I figured out — long before it was public — what was really going on. And even though I was young, I felt disappointed in both the pastor and my neighbor.

Tonight, a woman disappointed me for another reason. Part of me is hurt, but another part is numb. Maybe I have no one to blame, though. Maybe I should know by now not to trust people.

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