Monday, November 23, 2015

Dreams, Dreams, Dreams

I had another memorable dream, enough to share....

I was in a sketchy-ish part of town, on foot, similar to a route I take to pick up one of my kids from school, but the dream version of it. Not much to recall from the first part, but I ended up running (for exercise: in this dream, I was a runner, which I am not currently) and met some local kids, not sure what they were up to, maybe no good, maybe just hanging out, so I engaged them in conversation (as I do), and invited them on my run to give them something constructive to do, and to train them about how to run.

I am not a runner, but, as previously mentioned, I am a volunteer coach and have been one for a long time. This dream made me out to know enough about running and training for whatever I was training for to be a mentor running coach for the brief run before the alarm went off. We ran through some vacant buildings, industrial-ish, in the neighborhood. Dodged some adults that would have wondered what we were doing!

So, if there is meaning, I assume it will present itself eventually, but I do think I need to break out the new pair of Adidas I bought because they were on sale a few months ago...

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Dream A Little Dream

This story starts with another story, from a while back in my college days.

A professor of Literature, in this case of a newly-created class on archetypes in literature, started by describing a dream in which he was standing over a field, planted some seeds (if memory serves), and knelt to tend and wave his hands over the seedlings so that they would grow. I can see him kneeling on the classroom floor. He then assumed that this was about this new class and his students, a brilliant lead-in to archetypes. Great class, learned a lot.

The other night I had a dream, now getting dimmer, about being out and about and running into 2 boys and some parents, that we didn't know, but, as I do, I engaged them in conversation. One of the boys said something about being bad at something (a sport or school, now I can't remember! argh) and I immediately said "you can do it, of course you can.: I encouraged him to keep working. It felt right, perfect, and good.

There is some context, of course, that may have caused the dream, or affected it. My older son was just cut from the pool of basketball hopefuls, and there was talk of the life lesson there; sometimes you work very hard for something and still don't achieve it. My younger son and I (the coach) lost in the first round of our soccer tournament, ending our season rather abruptly. Also, I was talking to a colleague that is on the facility staff, she cleans up. She's a single mother and we chat fairly often about life ans stuff and I gave her a little pep talk about life stuff recently, joking that I'm preparing for my career as a Motivational Speaker. She replied that I should totally do that.


So, what's in a dream? Is the dream a reflection of my experiences, or is it a message? Is it a distillation of my experiences into some sort of lesson, or is just a reaction?

Not sure, but it sure felt like a revelation to me, that my ability to make people feel better about themselves, their circumstances and their abilities is what I'm supposed to be doing in life.

Hmmm.