Some nights I have dreams that are so pleasant, I hate to wake up. In those dreams, I'm usually capable of some physical feat that results in my being admired by others, such as being able to leap high into the air, defying the laws of gravity, then hovering above everyone and looking down upon them. Hmmm, I wonder what the psychological implications of that dream would be ? Sometimes, I relive romantic relationships from my past, and those are the dreams I really hate to end. There weren't that many such moments in real life, and the dream versions are usually better than the reality was.
More often, my dreams are intertwined with all my anxieties and neuroses. One of my big fears is the idea of being buried alive, and sometimes I dream about that. Is the dream the result of the fear, or is the fear the result of the dream ? Damned if I know, but I hate that dream, and fortunately I rarely have it. One night I woke up in the middle of the "being buried alive" dream, and realized I'd somehow covered my face with my pillow, which cut off my breathing.
My most common dreams are those in which I re-experience my years in college or the workforce, not as they actually were but in a surrealistic montage that mixes elements of reality and fantasy. These dreams are usually populated with people that I knew, friends or colleagues from work, and in the dreams they're unchanged from the way they were when I knew them. The "plots", such as they are, generally involve the kind of angst that accompanies being a college student or an employee in the state bureaucracy. Some people have shared with me that they have similar dreams: Not being prepared for a major test or presentation, showing up for a final exam and realizing I haven't attended a single session of the class, that kind of thing.
In a dream I have often, I'm at work again, surrounded by people that I really did work with over 25 years (but now all in one place at the same time). The dream always centers around some variation of this concept: I haven't completed an assignment within the deadline specified, and in fact, I don't even know how to do the task I've been assigned. When I wake up after this dream, I'm as tired as if I'd been digging a ditch.
Last night, I dreamed that I was in school again, maybe high school since the other characters in the dream were teenaged boys I knew in high school. When I arrive for class (whatever it is), one of the boys tells me I'm late and that I can't attend since all the seats are taken. Thus begins my search for a classroom with an empty seat, a search that's futile in this dream until very near the end. There was more, but after a few hours of being awake, the details fade pretty rapidly.
Given a choice, I'll take the dreams in which I'm admired for my superhuman physical prowess every time.
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