All I Care About (Is Love)

Image courtesy of AI!

A recurring dream, a Facebook memory, and the quiet end of an old story.

Last night I had one of those dreams.

I’ve had it hundreds… perhaps thousands of times over the past forty years. It wears different costumes, but it’s always the same story. This time I had been hired, at the last minute, as a swing performer in the musical Chicago.

There had been no rehearsal. No walk-through. No script. No preparation. I was simply told to go on. Against all odds, I somehow stumbled my way through Act One. Then came the interval. Everyone was incredibly supportive. The cast and crew couldn’t believe I’d been thrown into such an impossible situation. They understood, and they encouraged me, however, I refused to go back on for Act Two. Not because I thought I wasn’t capable, but because I hadn’t been given the opportunity to prepare. There is a difference.

Then the dream shifted to a cast meeting after the show, where the cast held a raffle. For reasons I couldn’t understand, everyone wanted me to receive the prize money. It was only $350… yet I felt embarrassed. Unworthy. I was acutely aware that while many people genuinely wanted me to have it, there would surely be others quietly thinking…

“Why him?”

I could almost feel their silent judgement. Or perhaps… I imagined it.

The resident director had worked with me decades earlier. She believed in me. She’d hired me because she knew what I was capable of. Yet there I was, convinced that once everyone realised I wasn’t the young performer I used to be, I’d probably be thanked politely and dismissed the following day.

It was the quintessential imposter syndrome dream. Nothing new there. I’ve lived with versions of that dream for decades… as a performer, as a musician, as a teacher, as a medium, as an author.

As… me.

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The funny thing is, when I woke, I didn’t need anyone to interpret the dream for me. I already knew exactly what it meant. I’ve spent a lifetime analysing my own psyche.. to be honest, probably a little too much.

I’ve often joked that my relentless self-exploration is part of what makes me good at what I do. I constantly question myself. I constantly look for ways to improve. I rarely assume I’ve got it right.

That striving has served me well, but it’s also been exhausting. The line between healthy self-reflection and relentless self-criticism can become very blurry.

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As I reflected on the dream this morning, something else dawned on me. The dream itself hadn’t really changed, but I had. Usually, after one of these dreams, I’d wake with a lingering sense of dread, shame, and often guilt… that familiar knot in my stomach accompanied by that quiet feeling that perhaps I really wasn’t enough.

Today…

I woke feeling excited. Not euphoric or carefree, just excited. That caught me completely off guard. The old dream had arrived… but the old emotional ending hadn’t.

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Then another layer revealed itself. Beneath the excitement was something else… a very slight feeling of overwhelm. So slight and unassuming, I almost missed it. It wasn’t panic or anxiety.

Just… overwhelm.

The funny thing is, once I noticed it, I realised it had always been there. Every significant period of growth in my life has carried that same feeling quietly in the background. Not neccessarily because something was wrong, but because something was changing.

I found myself saying something I’ve reflected on, preached, and expressed many times before:

“It’s not scary… it’s just new.”

I sat with that for quite a while. How many times have I mistaken newness for danger? How many opportunities have I approached with unnecessary caution simply because my nervous system interpreted unfamiliar territory as something to fear?

Maybe what I’ve called anxiety all these years hasn’t always been anxiety. Maybe some of it has simply been the feeling of becoming someone I’ve never been before.

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One thought kept returning.

I don’t want to sabotage this. Not through fear, not through overthinking, and not by convincing myself that I somehow don’t deserve whatever good is beginning to unfold.

I simply want to allow myself to enjoy it. To breathe fully. To trust wholeheartedly without all the usual negotiations. To keep walking… moving forward with confidence, integrity and authenticity.

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Then something happened that made me laugh. I opened Facebook. The very first thing that appeared was one of those “On This Day” memories. Photographs from my modelling days in my twenties.

There I was. Young, vibrant me standing confidently in front of the camera. Looking every bit like someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Except… I know that young man, I remember him well. He questioned himself constantly.

Those photographs reminded me of something important. The self-doubt wasn’t created yesterday. It’s travelled with me for decades. The faces have changed, and the careers have changed. And thankfully, the hairstyles have certainly changed.

But that quiet little voice has remained remarkably consistent.

Yet despite it all… life continued. I performed. I taught. I travelled. I became a minister. I sat with people in grief. I wrote books. I kept showing up.

Perhaps courage isn’t the absence of self-doubt. Perhaps it’s simply refusing to let self-doubt have the final word.

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Carl Jung wrote:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I’ve loved that quote for years. This morning it landed differently. Maybe that recurring dream has never been trying to frighten me. Maybe it has simply been inviting me to notice something… to recognise an old pattern. Because once we can see a pattern… we no longer have to become it.

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It doesn't matter whether the Facebook memory appearing after that dream was synchronicity, coincidence (are there really any???) or simply an algorithm doing what algorithms do. What mattered was the conversation it sparked within me.

The young man in those photographs thought he wasn’t enough, and the man writing these words still has moments of wondering.

The difference is, today, I also have hope, I have excited anticipation, and  I understand that little flutter in my chest isn’t something to fear. It’s simply my nervous system learning that joy, growth and possibility are becoming familiar.

So if that feeling returns tomorrow… I’ll simply smile, take a breath, and remind myself…

“It’s not scary… it’s just new.”

One final thought has stayed with me since waking. The title of Billy Flynn's signature song is All I Care About (Is Love). It's wonderfully ironic. Throughout the number he insists that love is all that matters, yet the audience knows they're watching a carefully choreographed performance... a man wrapped in charm, spectacle and illusion. Perhaps that's why my subconscious borrowed the song. Not to accuse me of being false, but to ask the subtler question:

“where am I still performing to earn acceptance, when all that's really being asked of me is authenticity?”

Maybe the greatest act of love isn't convincing others who we are. Maybe it's having the courage to stop performing altogether.