I once read that the faces of people in our dreams are not new faces, but rather the faces of people we have seen before, dredged up from some dormant archive in a dusty back corner of our mind. The man chasing me with the rusty chain saw last night might have handed me my Starbucks caffeine fix eight months ago.
If this is true, as the years pass, the cast of actors in our dreams expand. At first we start with just a few key characters - father, mother, doctor, nurse, maybe a few assorted relatives. Quickly, though, the central casting roster explodes in number. The woman at the grocery store, fresh from the gym, cell phone locked to her ear as she scans the shelves. The little boy with the Thomas the Train backpack and the Scooby Doo throwback lunchbox. Babysitters, bus drivers, bicyclists, bank tellers, businessmen, baseball players, bakers, BFFs from grades 1-5. We unthinkingly upload their mental images against the day when we our mind has roles to fill.
How ironic, then, that as my roster of faces continues to expand, the variety of my dreams seem to contract. Sure, some of the classic nightmares still make their regular rounds. I spend some nights starting a semester of college only to find myself going to an exam without ever attending a class, and other nights being chased by some randomly chosen person from my past and finding myself unable to scream. The nightmares are still there; it's the loss of the other dreams that baffles me.
Why have my dreams become so boring? Where are the buzzer-beating shots, the romances, the intrepid exploration of new worlds? Where are dreams that juxtapose two disparate areas of my life only to find that they mesh like chocolate and peanut butter? Where are the dreams so vividly colorful that I wake up feeling the real world is pallid and stale?
If I can draw upon an ever-expanding arsenal of intelligence, experiences, and even faces, why should my dreams grow more prosaic each passing year?
I am forced to wonder if this is a symptom of feeling trapped in my current life. As life goes on, more and more things feel fixed, irreversible, inexorable. Job, spouse, mortgage, and kids can dictate a daily to-do list that leaves one feeling void of any control, any choice. Any dreams.
My mind may feel more compelled to tackle day-to-day problems rather than spend time engaged on what might be, for dwelling on something that could never be is nothing but a waste of time.
If so, that's a shame. Because if I do not dare to believe that I can have a spouse and job and mortgage and kids and still have room for new possibilities, then I am just going through the motions. And that is no life.
Tonight, I will dream. I will live.
If this is true, as the years pass, the cast of actors in our dreams expand. At first we start with just a few key characters - father, mother, doctor, nurse, maybe a few assorted relatives. Quickly, though, the central casting roster explodes in number. The woman at the grocery store, fresh from the gym, cell phone locked to her ear as she scans the shelves. The little boy with the Thomas the Train backpack and the Scooby Doo throwback lunchbox. Babysitters, bus drivers, bicyclists, bank tellers, businessmen, baseball players, bakers, BFFs from grades 1-5. We unthinkingly upload their mental images against the day when we our mind has roles to fill.
How ironic, then, that as my roster of faces continues to expand, the variety of my dreams seem to contract. Sure, some of the classic nightmares still make their regular rounds. I spend some nights starting a semester of college only to find myself going to an exam without ever attending a class, and other nights being chased by some randomly chosen person from my past and finding myself unable to scream. The nightmares are still there; it's the loss of the other dreams that baffles me.
Why have my dreams become so boring? Where are the buzzer-beating shots, the romances, the intrepid exploration of new worlds? Where are dreams that juxtapose two disparate areas of my life only to find that they mesh like chocolate and peanut butter? Where are the dreams so vividly colorful that I wake up feeling the real world is pallid and stale?
If I can draw upon an ever-expanding arsenal of intelligence, experiences, and even faces, why should my dreams grow more prosaic each passing year?
I am forced to wonder if this is a symptom of feeling trapped in my current life. As life goes on, more and more things feel fixed, irreversible, inexorable. Job, spouse, mortgage, and kids can dictate a daily to-do list that leaves one feeling void of any control, any choice. Any dreams.
My mind may feel more compelled to tackle day-to-day problems rather than spend time engaged on what might be, for dwelling on something that could never be is nothing but a waste of time.
If so, that's a shame. Because if I do not dare to believe that I can have a spouse and job and mortgage and kids and still have room for new possibilities, then I am just going through the motions. And that is no life.
Tonight, I will dream. I will live.
