Saturday, July 7, 2012

Dreams expose our hidden concerns


Dreams tell us things our conscious life won’t.

And if we listen to what they’re telling us, we can learn about the hidden side of ourselves, and in time, be comfortable in our own skin.

Sigmund Freud breaks down a dream as “data taken in from the day’s residue and if images are important enough to be incorporated in it they must be reinforced by older, meaningful, affect-laden concerns.” (Yalom)

I have a recurring dream where I am lost in a house that’s falling apart. The house is from my past. In the dream, I morph into myself as a boy. In the dream I wander through the house, lost in a vaguely familiar world of long ago.

I wake up with this sense of sadness and loss. My dad past away a few months ago and it hit me; “I’m next.”  
The dilapidated house in my dream represents a past that is long gone.  It represents the aging process. I’m not as vigorous as I once was. I’m falling apart.

Dreams peel away the masks we wear in public and come very close to our true self. They reveal the hidden and ultimate concerns we grapple with daily.

An ultimate concern that lurks just below the surface is ‘ones impending death,’ which I believe my dream reflects. One day I will die. And in 100 years I may be a footnote in some family member’s ancestery.com.

Life, like time goes on; with or without me. Like the house that is falling apart in my dream, all things fade. I can no longer hang on to a past that is no more.

My dream is helping me move on. And live out the remaining days accepting myself as I am now; being comfortable in my own skin.

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