Dreams

I have always been able to recall my dreams easily. Sometimes this is not a great thing, but I'm talking dreams, not nightmares. Dreams help me to process what is going on in my life. At times they are commonplace or trivial but other times they have helped me to understand and give meaning. At the risk of sounding... let's say "fruit loops"...they have even prepared me for something that would come about in my life. I don't really subscribe to the blanket meanings of objects and events that you might find in a book; generalized translations of dreams. Usually if I spend some time pondering the dream, I can find their meaning.

Some of the most significant dreams I have had were ones that the events contained wherein were not all that significant, but it was more of the emotions that were experienced in the dream. For instance, when I was a young adult I dreamt that I was getting married and my groom and I were looking in a store window. The store display had dozens of valuable trinkets. My husband watched me as I looked at the display. He then said to me, " One day, all of those will be yours." I decided later that he didn't mean I would have expensive collectibles, rather they were a representation of the priceless things in life...children, happiness, companionship, etc. The events were not necessarily of importance. I don't recall what my 'dream husband' looked like nor how old I was. I don't think I had the dream as a premonition of any kind. I think I had the dream to experience the feeling of being loved by a spouse. That person in my dream cared for me so much that he wanted to see that I would be happy in this life. This dream came at a time when I was particularly 'down' on dating and the opposite sex. I believe this dream was to help me know what a mature, healthy love could feel like.

Other times, I have humorous dreams that do not take a lot of pondering to figure out what they mean. My job as a social worker is to provide supportive services to individuals that have left the homeless shelter and are now in housing. I was recently assigned a new client and have been trying to understand him better. People fascinate me. I have always said my cool, unrealistic job I would have if I could have any job in the world would be to work for the FBI as a profiler. So while I don't get to help capture the serial killers of this generation, I do get to analyze the people I try to help. I was telling The Huz about this particular newly assigned client (all within confidentiality - I never reveal names) and how this individual claimed that he played pro-football. Some of my co-workers wondered how he had blown his way through his earnings and was now homeless. At this, I looked at them and asked, "Do you really think he played professional football?"

So last night, I dreamt that I was working with a client that claimed he had never had to deal with some of the things he was now facing - relying on public transportation, having to work extremely hard to get/maintain a job, etc. I smugly thought to myself, yeah, sure, whatever. Come to find out my new client in my dream was none other than David Hasselhoff! Apparently, he had in fact blown through his Baywatch earnings and was now having to deal with getting rent paid and his food stamp card activated.

This long post (my apologies) leads me to my point. I am thankful for dreams. Yeah, sometimes I have seemingly silly ones about actors that only Germany has embraced, but they help me to understand myself better and gain perspective.