Dreams and Life Stages

Dear George,

Like everyone, I’ve had recurrent dreams as long as I can remember.  Now, from the perspective of my elder years, what strikes me is how these have changed over time and how they reflected the particular life stage I was immersed in.  Here are some of the recurrent dreams that I recall most clearly.

Love,

Dave 

Childhood

My memories are fuzziest about my childhood dreams, but I do have a clear sense that they were usually scary.  Basically these were flight dreams in which I was in danger, terrified, and being chased by some powerful malicious entity.  Monsters, wild animals, Nazis, murderous criminals.  Sometimes this was in the forest.  I don’t think I usually got caught, mostly because the chase was so frightening that it woke me up. 

I haven’t had flight dreams for many many years, and I suspect they were particularly distinctive of childhood fears.  Being relatively small, weak, and vulnerable and being scared about a dangerous world.  This might have involved fears about parents, older kids, teachers, etc., but I suspect my flight dreams were especially fueled by comic books, Disney movies, and the weekly Saturday matinee cowboy, war, detective, and horror movies that we attended.     

Adolescence

I remember my most recurrent teenage dream very clearly, though it too is long gone.  In my waking life I had a part-time clerk job in my grandfather’s drugstore which required that I drive from our home in Menominee, Michigan, across the Hattie Street Bridge to the drugstore in Marinette, Wisconsin, the twin city where it was located.  The bridge was right next to the Menominee River dam where water came rushing down.   In my dream I was driving our family car across the Hattie Street Bridge when I suddenly discovered that the center section had collapsed.  Unable to brake in time, my car and I plummeted down into the rocks and white water to our destruction. 

I’ve always thought of this as my most creative dream.  A perfect symbolic representation of the anxieties connected with the perilous transition from adolescence to adulthood.  Clearly I feared I was doomed.  

College

I had the same recurrent dream as most other college students I’ve known.  It was finals week in the semester, and I suddenly discovered that I was accidentally registered for a course I’d never attended.  It was too late to withdraw, and I had to take the final exam if I had any hope of not failing.  I knew absolutely nothing about the subject matter.  The exam was starting in a couple of minutes.

There are lots of sources of anxiety during the college years, but constant evaluation and the threat of failure on examinations probably top the list.  

Early Career

My college exam anxiety dreams persisted for several decades, deeply rooted as they were.  However, once I became a classroom teacher, my student dream was gradually replaced by a complementary teacher dream.   Instead of a final exam, it was the first day of the semester, and I was notified by my department head that I was scheduled to teach a new class that I was totally unprepared for.  Like Nuclear Science or Chinese History.  The class was beginning in minutes, and I had to go in and bluff my way through.  In one variation of this dream, all of the students, one after the next, walked out of class during my lecture. 

It's interesting that students and teachers have pretty much the same dream.  I guess that higher education is fraught with tension, no matter which side you’re on.   

Later Career

Anxiety seems at the core of most of my dreams.  However, in middle age, perhaps the prime time of life,  I began having much more enjoyable,  anxiety-free dreams.  One version involved flying.  I would simply start waving my hands up and down, and then I would slowly rise upward to the ceiling or to the sky.  People watched in amazement.  An exhilarating, freeing feeling.  In another related version I would run at full speed along the sidewalk, then jump off the ground, and, amazingly, my momentum would carry me through the air for a city block or more.  I imagined myself breaking all of the records for the long jump at the Olympics. 

I see these as feel-good dreams in which I possessed special powers that were both unique and rewarding, including gaining recognition from others.  They came at a time when I felt in more control of my life – career, marriage, parenthood – and I apparently could afford to relax and enjoy my success. 

Retirement

Nowadays the dream that I have most often involves a return to anxiety, if not terror.  I suddenly recall that I had rented an expensive hotel room in another city a year ago and that I had brought all my books and other belongings and left them stored there.  I’d totally forgotten that I’d done that.  The current hotel bill was over a hundred thousand dollars, and I had only one day left in which to drive to the city and try to retrieve my belongings. 

I regard this as another age-related dream.  First, there is the sense of running out of time.  Second, what to do about an enormous number of belongings.   One of the things that worries me most in real life is what to do about the 60 years’ worth of stuff that Katja and I have accumulated and that fills our attic, basement, and storage room to overflowing. 

Postscript

For the most part, my dreams seems to mirror the central fears of my waking life.  What strikes me most is that changes in dreams follow changes in life roles.  Perhaps I will have a new recurrent dream in coming years.  It already makes me nervous to think about it.