The Same Damn Dream, About Twice Yearly
Like clockwork I can count on having the same anxious dream about twice a year. I'm in high school or college, not sure which, and I'm enrolled in a class that I've been skipping with reckless abandon for weeks. I learn that the deadline for dropping the class without penalty has come and gone, and am now forced to jump in way behind and do the best I can, or just bag it and accept the F. I always wake up before I make a decision.
I know, I know, this isn't really unique in the world of anxiety dreams. You can find variations of this dream told in zillions of sites on the Web, if not in your own head. And I think most of the posited explanations are bullshit. I've tried Jungian amplification, but my wakeful imagination flips the bird at that sort of thing and just takes over the scene, usually to comic effect. Many people are inclined to give great meaning to dreams such as this, but I'm more comfortable with the notion that it's just sort of an electrochemical purging of some kind. As if the unconscious brain freely activates regions associated with our basic emotions, and those regions fire off electrochemical messages to other regions that store past anxieties and experiences, thus producing a re-run.
I don't know.
But I'm also inclined to believe this because our adult psychology is predominantly rooted in childhood and adolescence. So it makes sense that we dream these youthful, archetypal experiences over and over again while the mind is idle and undirected. I'll keep wondering about it, though. The other day, while catching a much needed nap thanks to Das Füssmeister, I had the I have a part in a play but I blew it off and now it's showtime dream. I was never in a play. Never tried out for a part. Never dug the stage.
But there I was, trembling offstage behind the curtains. Of course, I woke up before they opened. Why are dreams such a tease, anyway? Can't I get to see myself bomb the show one of these nights?
Labels: at home
6 Comments:
I get recurring dreams every year too. Mine are really weird though--me as a silver C3P0 going white water rafting in an old row boat. It's nice to know I'm not the only one. DiFaz
11:50 AM
Echuta!
8:27 PM
I've had a recurring dream most of my life that is so odd I can't even put it into words. Completely surreal. I've had it since I was a kid - maybe 10 years old. Imagine a yellow kitchen suspended in an endless expanse of nothingness. I'm a bowling ball that flies by it from time to time. That's the best I can explain it.
11:14 AM
Too funny todd. I have similar weird, unintelligible dreams, but I can never quite bring them into the world of words.
12:15 PM
I've been blessed with the ability to forget my dreams almost immediately upon wakening. On occasion I try to recall, but it never comes to me.
I'm grateful. I've got enough useless crap floating around in my head from my waking life.
No need for that baggage too.
4:07 PM
i have a dream where i am at my cottage on keuka lake and i am swimming thru the water at night and i see a light. i always swim towards the light and it leads to a dave where i swim up into. i walk through a maze of filing cabinets in this cave until i get to a desk with a man writing and he turns around saying, "how many i help you"...ive had that dream about 10 times throughout my life. cant find any meaning in it.
-daniel
1:40 AM
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