If Dreams Have Meanings and Words That Do

Woman Sweeping, Edouard Vuillard C 1892

If dreams have meaning then a recent dream of mine has some interesting things to reveal. It was set in a motel room that was long and narrow with a door at each end. It was messy inside and I kept trying to sweep little boxes into the corners. Every time I’d get the boxes all swept up, Don would open the front door of the motel room and shove more boxes inside. According to the dream dictionary a motel represents trying to hold on to temporary feelings and boxes represent gifts or presents. Doors in dreams have several meanings depending on if they’re open, closed or locked---everything from resisting something to exploring new feelings. But in my dream the door at the far end of the room kept swinging open and shut and it was daylight outside that door, but still night out the other door Don that kept opening up. I was annoyed that he wouldn’t quit shoving boxes inside so I could quit sweeping.

I’ve always loved John Steinbeck’s title, The Winter of Our Discontent. It rolls off your tongue so smoothly and paints an image of bleakness with so little effort. But I don’t like the feeling of living in a winter of discontent and you guessed it, I feel like I am. I’ve been restless lately and I can’t decide if it’s because of the winter blues, boredom, loneliness and/or a deeper grief related issue. Maybe my dream was trying to help me figure that out? My dreams are so real at times that I often regret training myself to recall them. I even quit keeping a dream diary 13-14 years ago when my dad developed dementia and literally couldn’t tell the difference between dreams and reality. The dream described above woke me up 3-4 times through out the night and like a needle stuck on an old phonograph the dream would replay again when I’d fall back asleep.

When I’m feeling this restless I ramble-write, not knowing where I’m going to end up and ramble writing often reminds me of a John Steinbeck’s well-known quote from In Awe of Words:  “A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn’t telling or teaching or ordering. Rather he seeks to establish a relationship of meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say—and to feel—“Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.””  

The winter blues, boredom, loneliness and/or a deeper grief related issue, does it really matter what is causing my restless discontent? The cure for all these things is basically the same. We need to reach out to others---sometimes I go a week without hearing the sound of a human voice except for those on television. We need to think outside the box we’ve taped ourselves inside and find a way to bust out of our safe little routines. For me that also means I need to quit fighting what my dreams are trying to tell me. When put in context with what I’d been doing the day before the above mentioned dream, it’s easier to understand why I kept getting overrun with ‘boxes’ from Don. I’d been working on identifying the lessons that Don taught me about life and love (see my last blog post). My subconscious mind obviously twisted my list of lessons into the boxes/gifts. The long motel room (temporary grief tunnel), the door that kept opening and closing (the future I’m both ready for and afraid of) and the sweeping (me preparing to say farewell to Don) all make sense. The question I have now is would I be better or worse off if I said ‘good-bye’ instead? Do I want to keep a string attached to the past or not? ©

“Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance.

Good-bye is short and final, a word with teeth sharp

to bite through the string that ties past to the future.”

John Steinbeck

The Winter of Our Discontent