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.

Reflections on my Dad: Don't take life too seriously

My dad recently passed away. And it’s only now that I’m finally learning the lessons from his life. Whether he or I knew it at the time, my dad was teaching me life lessons.

I am up to the third life lesson. The first two were, 'actions speak louder than words and the importance of self sacrifice.'

 Life lesson # 3 is: don’t take life too seriously:

I learned from my Dad not to take life too seriously: My dad was born in Brooklyn, New York, during the great depression; a time of devastating poverty, joblessness and outright destitution.

Rising out of this human calamity, was a belief that worldly possessions are fleeting, and life is indifferent to ones survival. 

It was from this background, that the conviction ‘not to take life too seriously,’ became embedded into the culture of that day. Why? Because you never knew when life as you knew it, would come crashing down.

My dad’s attitude towards life reflected author Fredrick Buechner’s admonition: “here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid.”

As a boy, I saw my dad as physically strong presence. And to witness his decline, reminded me how fragile life is. Yet my dad’s determination and attitude towards his ‘life circumstance,’ kept him from despair.       

During the last few years, I observed the slow deterioration of my dad’s health until he became wheelchair bound. I asked him ‘do you ever miss doing things you used to do?” And he said to me, “I don’t worry about that son, there are people in this world worse off than me.”

In the months leading up to his passing, he was hospitalized with severe pneumonia and he could barely catch a breath to speak to the Emergency intake nurse who asked him to rate his health on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 being poor and 10 being good; he told her it’s a 9, ‘my health is ‘good.’

We all thought dad was in denial, but he was very much aware of his condition, he would not allow sickness and pending death to dictate his attitude towards ‘the cards’ life had dealt him.  

He was living out of the principle 'don’t take life too seriously;' in spite of what life had handed him, he left this earth on his own terms.