I’m unsure if you all know this, but Amazon lied to you. They have you speaking to an “Alexa” that is a fabrication – an “Alexa” that does not exist, as there is only one Alexa. Alexa was my elementary school crush, although a timid, ten-year-old boy never could muster up the stones required to admit this to her, so she may have never known. Either that, or it was painfully obvious this was the case, and it served both parties to carry on letting the already understood remain “unknown.” After all, if I refuse to confess, this refusal provides me a safe circumnavigation of rejection, along with the daydream of “what might have been,” and, furthermore, allows her to fend off the embarrassment that somebody so low on the hierarchy of “cool kids” has taken to her. To me, she resembled something like the prototypical American “girl-next-door,” which, apparently, I had an inherent attraction to.
Today, I never think about her. I understand the irony in that as here I am, writing about her, but she never crosses my mind in the day-to-day. However, she does make odd appearances in dreams, which could only mean that, obviously, she is representative or symbolic of something. For the longest time, I’ve contemplated the symbolic meaning of the one Alexa. What could it be? Alexa’s cameos in my dreams are quite strategic. She knows what she’s doing, a line that in the modern era is reserved for “influencers,” but contextually, that’s not what I mean. Those influencers actually don’t know what they’re doing; Alexa does. Alexa seems to surface in dreams whenever I find myself wondering “when, or if, the next one will come,” whenever I am in doubt that they ever will. This strategic placement has led me to believe that she is a representation of hope, faith, love, perseverance, and all those wonderful things; however, as mentioned, she knows what she is doing, and she always exits left with a message that it is not her – it is not in her that I should vest my hope. I find myself disappointed with the message, not least because I fancy the “storybook endings” and the “fairytales.” What a story that would be! Twenty years or so later, she re-emerges as “the one,” confirming everything!? That “true love” is real, that fairytales exist, and why not, even that God is and always was!? The one Alexa lays these wild, fantastical beliefs to rest with every concluding scene, even if it be by an unfortunate circumstance. For example, in the most recent dream, after an evening out with friends, Alexa and I agreed to go to a show later that night, just her and I, making me think that I was Lou Gehrig, the luckiest man on the face of the earth (earth, earth, earth)! The walk to the door before we reconvened later that night, or so I thought, even ended with a kiss. At last, the breakthrough! As she opened the door to go inside, she turned around and informed me that “the show had been canceled.” End scene.
These are just dreams, of course – nothing to be taken too seriously. Besides, I am attempting to discover the symbolic meaning of Alexa, not to actually “win” Alexa. I feel like such a douchebag at the moment, sitting inside of a coffee shop, contemplating the meaning of somebody who is only now a character. Goodness, I don’t even like coffee shops, really. All I want is a regular coffee with cream and sugar. Why do they look at me like I’m an alien when I order that? Anyhow, the symbolism of Alexa is simple. She is paradise and the snake, she is optimism and pessimism, she is the dream and reality, she is hope and despair, she is the yin and also the yang, and she is the lesson that it is an impossibility to have one without the other. Moreover, while Alexa is a “real” person, as she is somewhere out there, at least I hope she is, she is a reminder from the Divine that we do not encounter any individual by mistake. Everyone we meet serves a purpose, and we serve to them a purpose just as well.
“Thank you, God, for using the one Alexa as an instrument for Your teaching,” I think to myself. My imaginary troubles, now that Alexa’s meaning has been discovered, are now realized as exactly that – imaginary. I take a sip of my ever-so-difficult coffee order, and I’m glad I have gotten to the bottom of this. It is shocking to me that people do not believe that dreams are God’s way of using imagery to speak directly to us. However, because the wheels of the mind are continuously turning, it would be disingenuous of me not to mention that I have also considered the possibility that I have created the meaning of the dreams all on my own. There could be zero significance to the dream, but because I am such a sucker for myth, I have chosen to believe the former, all logic and reason be damned.
I suppose I’ve come full circle to where I always return, the reality that, ultimately, I know nothing. It’s not a bad place to be, actually. The reality that I know nothing is reality. “ALEXA!!!” yells out the Barista, snapping me out of my trance. A few tables down, she stands up. She looks oddly familiar. No, I shouldn’t bother her…
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