Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Anxiety of Lateness in Dreams

I blogged about 6 years ago about a dream that I had.  Since then I have had plenty of dreams I am sure but none that I decided to blog about; until now that is.

Sometime in the past week I had dreams on consecutive nights that had the general theme of being late for something.  I remember after waking up after the second dream thinking that I really should blog about these.  Here are the dreams.

  • Dream 1: I was in a house that is unknown to me in the real world but I was familiar enough with it in my dream that I knew where things were at inside the house.  For some reason I had some friends over.  These were friends that I had in my high school days so I knew them.  For some reason not explained in the dream, we got home very late and because of this we slept in later than normal.  We had to leave to get somewhere by 8 AM and I had just awoken at 7:30 and I was taking a shower.  The water pressure was horrible so the shower was taking longer than normal.  To complicate matters, I had longer hair and the water pressure was not allowing me to rinse the shampoo / conditioner out of my hair.  I was very frustrated at the water pressure, my choice to have long hair, my sleeping in and the whole situation in general.  I woke up before I got out of the shower
  • Dream 2: I was in our current house here in McKinney as far as I could tell.  We were late getting out of the door to go somewhere (church maybe?) and we were trying to get the dogs put up into their cages.  The dog we were having trouble with was not known to me in the real world but in the dream it was our dog.  After failing to round up the dog and due to our lateness we decided to leave the dog to roam the house out of its cage while we were out.  As I closed the door and was locking it with my house key I noticed that the dog was now in the yard.  Somehow we got the dog back into the house but we were all the more later for it.  Finally I went to turn the key on the front door and the door came off of its top hinge.  I was very frustrated with the dog, its behavior, my front door and the whole situation in general.  I woke up right as I was trying to get investigate how long it would take to get the door back on its hinges.

For several minutes after I woke up after both of these dreams I was still anxious.  In real life, as in the dreams, I hate being late.  Before I was married and especially before I had kids (and dogs) I tried to be early to everything.  I remember showing up for youth bowling league on Saturday mornings right when the bowling center opened (about 30 minutes before the league started).  The jobs that I had early in life all had working hours with a start time when I was expected to arrive and clock into work.  After I had a job that was no longer hourly and one that had a more flexible schedule I relaxed a bit but there there still things that had starting times (church for example).  Most recently I just try focus on my being ready to go and I let the wife worry about her being ready.  When I am ready to leave for church for example, rather than bellow out the current time like it was a public service that I was tasked to provide,  I just sit in a chair and (dare I say “patiently”) wait.  I purposely sit in a chair with no view of the clock.  Since I do not wear a watch or bring my cell phone with me to church, I have no way of knowing what time it is until we all get into the car.  I would wager that if you ask my wife if I was getting better about my anxiety of lateness she would agree but these dreams brought all those early year’s feelings back.  It is still a struggle not to worry unnecessarily about being late and these dreams have made me to consider working harder on keeping calm.  It is strange what your mind focuses on when you dream really as I have not felt this bad about lateness in more than 10 years.

Just like in my original blog from 6 years ago, let’s visit http://dreammoods.com and see what they interpret my dream as meaning…

  • Late: To dream that you are late signifies your fear of change and your ambivalence about seizing an opportunity. You may feel unready, unworthy, or unsupported in your current circumstances. Additionally, you may be overwhelmed or conflicted with decisions about your future. Time is running out and you no longer have time to accomplish all the things you want. Alternatively, being late in your dream could be telling you that it is better late than never.

Interesting.  I do have a new manager at work and he does have a slightly different workload that he wants me to focus on than what I have on my plate now.  Also, I have been thinking more about my future retirement and whether or not I am putting enough into 401k’s and IRA’s.  Also, there are a few things that I would like to start doing (similar to me starting running a few months ago).  Maybe there is something to this dream interpretation thing!

  • Door: To dream that you are locking the door suggests that you are closing yourself off from others. You are hesitant in letting others in and revealing your feelings. It is indicative of some fear and low self-worth.
  • Shower: To dream that you are taking a shower in clear, fresh water symbolizes spiritual or physical renewal and forgiveness. You are washing the burdens out of your life

Either one of these things may or may not be true, I am not sure.  I was not really successful in either dream in accomplishing the task (completing the shower or locking the door) so I am not sure what that could mean.  Maybe I will have more dreams this week.  I will be sure to let you know.

Jon

No comments:

Post a Comment