Dear George,
They say that
dreams are a window to one’s soul. I’m not so sure I agree with that
precise wording, but I do think that dreams tap into one’s deepest feelings and
concerns. I’m also struck by how dreams change systematically over the
course of one’s life. I don’t remember much about my childhood dreams
except that they were scary and involved monsters or being chased and murdered
by evil beings. The first
recurrent dream that I clearly recall is one that I had during high school
after I’d begun driving . I dreamt that I was driving our family car
across the Hattie St. Bridge which ran between my home town of Menominee and
its twin city, Marinette. The Hattie St. Bridge crosses the Menominee
River next to the paper mill dam. As I approached the middle of the
bridge I suddenly saw that its midsection had completely collapsed. I hit
the brakes but, too late to stop, I plunged to death in the whitewater rapids below. The dream was very
real and terrifying. Years later I
decided that this was a dream about the life transition that I was facing. Menominee was my familiar, safe
hometown, while Marinette felt like a more threatening, alien place to me. I interpreted my dream as an expression
of anxiety about my perilous journey from adolescence to adulthood and
the fear that I would never be
able to make it to the other side.
When I went
to college, my bridge dream was quickly replaced by a chronic academic
nightmare that I learned was shared by just about everybody I knew. In
the typical version, the academic term was coming to an end, and I suddenly
discovered that I was registered for a difficult course that I’d never
attended. It was too late to drop the class, and the final exam was
scheduled in minutes. My emotional reaction was one of apprehension and
panic. I continued this dream into graduate school, and even today I have
some version of it every now and then. When I finished grad school,
though, and began a teaching career, the content of the dream changed.
Now I suddenly discovered in my dream that it was the first day of classes, and
I had been assigned to teach a difficult course that I knew absolutely nothing
about. Not only that but I was late for class, and I didn’t know where
the room was. I hadn’t ordered a textbook, and I had no idea what to say
to the students. I was so late arriving for class that by the time I
finally got there all the students had walked out in disgust. All these
academic dreams have to do with pressures of being evaluated, being unprepared,
self-doubts about competence, and a felt inability to control what was
happening to me. These were very stressful dreams, and I’d say that were
connected to real-life anxieties about academic life, whether taking exams as a
student or teaching classes.
Later, when I
began to feel more established and comfortable in my job, I started having more pleasant dreams. Many of them were about flying. I
would flap my arms, and I’d slowly lift off the floor, then drift around near
the ceiling . People would look up and be astonished by my remarkable
flying capacity. Sometimes I’d do
the same thing out on the street, flying hundred of yards up in the
air. Later flying was replaced by a “long jumping” dream in
which I’d run at a fast pace for ten or twenty yards, then jump off the ground,
and glide effortlessly through the air for a city block or more. Passersby were amazed. In my dream I decided that I would
enter the Olympics and that I would set all the records for the Olympics long
jump, even though I was forty or fifty years old. These dreams also felt
very real and had an eerie, pleasurable feeling about them -- none of the
distressing feelings of my earlier academic nightmares.
In recent
years my dreams reflect a “mature adulthood life stage.” My most frequent
dream involves my returning to a fancy hotel room that I’d rented many months
before and where I’d stored all of my books and other possessions. I’d
forgetten I’d even rented the room.
I hadn’t paid the hotel bill when I left, and the bill now had mounted
up to many thousands of dollars. I was trying frantically to pack of all
my books and other possessions in boxes before the noon checkout time, but the
task was overwhelming, and I realized I could never meet the deadline. I
decided to flee the situation and forsake all my belongings. This dream
too has a kernel of truth. I think of it as a clutter dream. We have so much accumulated stuff in
our basement and attic, I can’t conceive of what to do about it. While I
know we should start disposing of things, the task seems insurmountable, and I
simply put it off from one year to the next.
For the most
part, my dreams seem to be fueled by anxiety, though the source and content of
anxiety changes in meaningful ways from one life stage to the next. I
enjoyed the dreams about flying and long-jumping, though I haven’t had one for
a while. Now I’m eager to see if I ever get that hotel room cleaned out. But if I do, what dream is going to
come next?
Love,
Dave
G-mail Comments
-Donna D
(3-1) So good david. I must
try to remember my dreams and get u to interpret them. Ur so good at it!
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