Last night I dreamed of traveling to Waikiki with Richard Branson and a group of old friends. The story opens at a private dining lounge aboard an ocean liner. A man from an earlier dream sat beside me with his arm around my shoulders – signaling to the others we were a pair. From the way he looked at me I saw that he assumed I’d be happy. I wasn’t.

I smiled sweetly, all the while wondering how he had made the leap in our mutual status, we hadn’t talked about it. I didn’t want to hurt or embarrass him so I carried on like nothing was different. My lack of reciprocal feelings would dawn on him soon enough. He was a good person and I liked him but for me there wasn’t any chemistry. That pretty much sums up the story of my romantic life, with few exceptions.

Meanwhile conversations were buzzing at the table. Sir Richard was leading with topics of interest and fueling us with his positive vibe. That’s when I noticed Arnold Schwarzenegger at the other end. This struck me as funny. We were a boisterous bunch, like school kids laughing and joking about the simplest things. “Oh, look I just squirted ketsup on my sleeve. Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah.

And just like that we were there, docking at Aloha tower. We disembarked from the bowels of the ship so as not to take the usual path. The choosing of a new way of being seems to have been part of what Richard and Arnold were teaching us. They had us run up a hotel stairway to take in views of the spring white sand beach, then run back down and out a side exit, not into the luxe lobby like common tourists.

My man friend had surmised by now that he had been mistaken and drifted away down the steps, distancing himself from me. I didn’t blame him. Arnold was busy doing Superman stuff, like wading dangerously close to the ships’ hull. It was then that we got wind that Trader Vic’s was closing its doors forever. Trader Vic’s and Don the Beachcomber* both hold a lot of nostalgia for me.

So we took off with speed to see what was what. Sure enough the old Tiki Bar was already almost completely dismantled. The tapa cloth wallpaper and hanging glass fish floats were nowhere to be seen. Sadness washed over me like a wave, washing away an inner room of memories. Richard was having none of it.

The pioneer of all things travel and expansion didn’t waste a second on disappointment. He was already off to another venue – a festive adobe eatery across the street. “Time waits for no one I hear him say.” So we all filed out to follow him but without much exuberance. I sat down on a bench outside in the morning sun. What were we doing here? I picked up a tablet to write and ask Richard what gives?

Congratulations! He wrote back with a neatly typed certificate of award. Richard came out of the adobe eatery beaming. Before I could completely comprehend what he meant, he spelled it out for me. “Up until now you’ve been dreaming! Now you’re awake and can be here now. And I woke up immediately.”

I guess this is where I would normally do a brief interpretive dream analysis but I think now that I’ve written the dream down it speaks for itself. It’s just amazing to me how dreams pull from such surprising symbols to convey big concepts. Tiki culture, really?

I’m also proud of myself for adding a thumbnail description to this post. That’s one of the strategies Derral Eves teaches in The YouTube Formula. Another update on that review will be up later. For now though it’s time to wrap some presents.

* Don the Beachcomber (aka Raymond Gantt) was a retired USAF, Lt. Col. who was a a WW II veteran from Texas. He was quite a colorful character. He claimed to have been a world traveler but he was known to be a teller of tall tales too., so who knows what’s true.

Whatever his true background may have been he created an elaborate Polynesian Village on his ranch in Encino, California and parlayed it into the first themed restaurant chain in America. His second wife divorced him and got possession of the name in the continental U.S. so Raymond, who now went by the name Don Beach, moved to Hawaii while it was still a territory, and developed The International Marketplace in downtown Waikiki. His Don the Beachcomber bar and restaurant birthed Tiki Culture in the mid- 20th century.