Dalai Lama, the Dream

I had another dream about the Dalai Lama. I was in Seattle again last week for work, and last time I was up there, I saw him speak. Maybe my brain thinks I should see him every time I go to Seattle.

I work for a corporate event strategy company, so in my dream I was in charge of the entire Dalai Lama event. Everything went terribly, terribly wrong, in my dream. We did everything we tell our clients not to do.

We held the event in a badly lit hotel conference lobby. No one could hear. We broke every cultural custom we could think of, most likely offending him and his staff miserably, even though of course he was gracious and nice.

The place was filled with obnoxious, drunk, loud Americans. But the Dalai never stopped smiling his patient, understanding smile.

So, in my dream, I turned my speech into a "what not to do, and this is what I've learned from the world's greatest spiritual guru in the past 10 minutes, just by being here," thing. I was really summing up, I was on a roll. I told him if he'd give us another chance, we'd show him what we'd learned and do it right next time.

He asked if we could do international events, and I said "yes, yes we can!" like I always do, and I went into my speech about how we have people all over the world who understand local customs, we just didn't bring them to Seattle.

He asked if we took credit cards, and could we just bill him on a monthly retainer. This was starting to go well, I was seeing the deal close nicely, despite the miserableness. Inside, I was applauding my charm, my wit, and my ability to improvise. I'm good, really good, I told myself.

Then, in my dream, my boss interrupted me to tell him that we could find the best lemon chicken around for his dinner, and we knew a company that was making big strides in regrowing human hair that we could refer him to. She wasn't joking.

Finally, he stopped smiling.

I think we lost the deal.