To be clear, by dreams, I mean the kind I have when I sleep. My hopes, wishes, and aspirations are all valid, as far as I can tell. We call those things dreams too, but again, they aren't the subject of this particular post. It's the stuff my subconscious does that's invalid.
I'm a different person in them, and almost always either weaker or just worse. For instance, the dream I just dreamt involved going back to High School at 28. In the dream, I never graduated, and I'd been technically enrolled in High School since 2000; but I was never going to class, and they moved me back a grade every few years. I was about to be sent back to middle school (junior high).
In the real world, I graduated. In the real world, it never mattered that I wasn't an excellent student. I get by as I always have, performing a bit better than people expect of me, but rarely so much better that anybody really takes notice. It's a path without much resistance, which I like, because resistance is troublesome.
So why am I dreaming that I'm stuck in High School, and more to the point, why am I dreaming that High School causes me so much trouble? I suppose there's some sort of poetic irony in there, because there were definitely classes I quite literally slept through, but that surely can't be why I'm dreaming of it now.
I've heard that psychologists who study dreams say there are certain templates to dreams, or dreams that most of us have at one time or another, and those dreams mean certain things. When you dream you've lost your teeth, it's because you're afraid of losing control; I've had that dream, I confess. When you dream of falling from a really high distance, it's supposed to mean something else; I've had a dream similar to that, a long, long time ago, but I was walking along a street and was suddenly launched high up into the air for no reason before I fell. It wasn't like I started on an airplane or cliff or something, it was more like an ACME springboard was hiding under a sidewalk panel and I was the first unlucky idiot to step on it.
Getting back on track, I've also heard that dreaming about standing at the front of the class, like when you're reading your paper aloud or whatever, and then it turns out you were naked the whole time, is supposed to mean something about vulnerability. I've had dreams of leaving the house without pants on, but again, those were teenage dreams, and these are different. I'm just in High School and I know I'm way too old for it. That's pretty much it.
So what am I to think when I wake up? Is it a sign that I'm ashamed of my life, that I didn't jump on the right opportunity at the right time? It seems like a really stupid notion, because trying to apply the metaphor to reality doesn't seem to work.
Tuition was climbing as I was going to school, and it spiked really high during the years I was 'supposed' to be in college. All these experts are saying people need to wait 'til their 30's to go to college because they're going to have to work until they're 70 or 80 (because they're going to live to be one-hundred and ten), and if they start as early as we're used to, they might find that they're degree will become outdated before they can retire. Most of the lessons I've learned in my life seem to have a similar theme: pace yourself. Everybody talks about 'seizing the day' and rushing to success because it won't come to you, yet a lot of the people who said that were married by 21, had two kids by 23, and were divorced by thirty. They're already in such debt, they may never pay it off in their lifetime. They're burning themselves on their own passion.
I'm not in any hurry, and I think that's healthy. It may come to be that I grow old without ever accomplishing some great thing, but I'll grow old without impregnating some girl I didn't love because we got drunk and didn't use protection, I'll grow old without ever going bankrupt, and I'll grow old without regretting some gamble I lost. Because I didn't gamble. I was methodical and safe, and I enjoyed watching the scenery as I drifted down the slow stream.
So why the dreams at all? Why do certain ones linger, when most are forgotten immediately? I couldn't tell you for certain, but I could tell you my guesses. My subconscious is kind of stupid. Sleep is there to help you sort through all you learned that day, to blend it together and let it settle through the wrinkles of your brain so you can make good use of the knowledge later. Dreams could be illusions created by the absorption process, incidental shapes that my subconscious sees and interprets like ink blots in a Rorschach test. Your mind either sees what it wants to see or sees the monsters it fears might be looking in the darkness. The subconscious is where emotions live, so fear and regret and insecurity get to play the game too.
We all have to dream, because we all need to sleep, but we can't fool ourselves about blots of ink on card stock. The reason we have society and technology and culture is because we have that part of our brain that sees a black shape on a piece of white paper and knows it's just a bunch of ink that soaked in where it happened to fall. Logic is our best feature, so we need to be careful about when we let mindless emotion take over. Dreams aren't signs that it's time we make changes to our lives. Dreams are just blots of ink that stain a bit too long as our brain tries to soak it all up.
Enjoy the pretty ones, but do your best to forget the others. Because the only way that unpleasantness can become real is if devote yourself to making it so.
In the real world, I graduated. In the real world, it never mattered that I wasn't an excellent student. I get by as I always have, performing a bit better than people expect of me, but rarely so much better that anybody really takes notice. It's a path without much resistance, which I like, because resistance is troublesome.
So why am I dreaming that I'm stuck in High School, and more to the point, why am I dreaming that High School causes me so much trouble? I suppose there's some sort of poetic irony in there, because there were definitely classes I quite literally slept through, but that surely can't be why I'm dreaming of it now.
I've heard that psychologists who study dreams say there are certain templates to dreams, or dreams that most of us have at one time or another, and those dreams mean certain things. When you dream you've lost your teeth, it's because you're afraid of losing control; I've had that dream, I confess. When you dream of falling from a really high distance, it's supposed to mean something else; I've had a dream similar to that, a long, long time ago, but I was walking along a street and was suddenly launched high up into the air for no reason before I fell. It wasn't like I started on an airplane or cliff or something, it was more like an ACME springboard was hiding under a sidewalk panel and I was the first unlucky idiot to step on it.
Getting back on track, I've also heard that dreaming about standing at the front of the class, like when you're reading your paper aloud or whatever, and then it turns out you were naked the whole time, is supposed to mean something about vulnerability. I've had dreams of leaving the house without pants on, but again, those were teenage dreams, and these are different. I'm just in High School and I know I'm way too old for it. That's pretty much it.
So what am I to think when I wake up? Is it a sign that I'm ashamed of my life, that I didn't jump on the right opportunity at the right time? It seems like a really stupid notion, because trying to apply the metaphor to reality doesn't seem to work.
Tuition was climbing as I was going to school, and it spiked really high during the years I was 'supposed' to be in college. All these experts are saying people need to wait 'til their 30's to go to college because they're going to have to work until they're 70 or 80 (because they're going to live to be one-hundred and ten), and if they start as early as we're used to, they might find that they're degree will become outdated before they can retire. Most of the lessons I've learned in my life seem to have a similar theme: pace yourself. Everybody talks about 'seizing the day' and rushing to success because it won't come to you, yet a lot of the people who said that were married by 21, had two kids by 23, and were divorced by thirty. They're already in such debt, they may never pay it off in their lifetime. They're burning themselves on their own passion.
I'm not in any hurry, and I think that's healthy. It may come to be that I grow old without ever accomplishing some great thing, but I'll grow old without impregnating some girl I didn't love because we got drunk and didn't use protection, I'll grow old without ever going bankrupt, and I'll grow old without regretting some gamble I lost. Because I didn't gamble. I was methodical and safe, and I enjoyed watching the scenery as I drifted down the slow stream.
So why the dreams at all? Why do certain ones linger, when most are forgotten immediately? I couldn't tell you for certain, but I could tell you my guesses. My subconscious is kind of stupid. Sleep is there to help you sort through all you learned that day, to blend it together and let it settle through the wrinkles of your brain so you can make good use of the knowledge later. Dreams could be illusions created by the absorption process, incidental shapes that my subconscious sees and interprets like ink blots in a Rorschach test. Your mind either sees what it wants to see or sees the monsters it fears might be looking in the darkness. The subconscious is where emotions live, so fear and regret and insecurity get to play the game too.
We all have to dream, because we all need to sleep, but we can't fool ourselves about blots of ink on card stock. The reason we have society and technology and culture is because we have that part of our brain that sees a black shape on a piece of white paper and knows it's just a bunch of ink that soaked in where it happened to fall. Logic is our best feature, so we need to be careful about when we let mindless emotion take over. Dreams aren't signs that it's time we make changes to our lives. Dreams are just blots of ink that stain a bit too long as our brain tries to soak it all up.
Enjoy the pretty ones, but do your best to forget the others. Because the only way that unpleasantness can become real is if devote yourself to making it so.
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