Dept. of Dreams

[kaffy_r]

I Try to Save the World in My Sleep

I don't dream nearly as much as I used to, or at least I don't remember the dreams I probably have. I think most people have that experience, especially as they grow older. But there are dreams I remember, and they are almost always of a type. 

In all of them, I'm trying to save someone, or many someones. I'm always so very slow, my limbs sticky with dream physics, but I keep trying, even though sometimes I know that what I can do isn't nearly enough. 

The earliest dream I had was when I was, I think, just approaching tweenhood. It was slightly different, involving a man in a silver sort-of-spacesuit coming up the front walk to our verandah, and telling me that I'd been chosen to join a team that was going to defeat a particularly odd villain; a disembodied brain housed inside a grandfather clock, itself placed on a train running constantly through the underground. I still remember the look of the underground station. I can't recall the end of the dream, but I think we saved the day. 

Many years later, I dreamed I was standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier, where dozens of children, orphans, were standing. I had to get them as far away from the landing area as possible, because a plan was going to crash onto the deck. I only had a short amount of time in which to do it. I recall how panic stricken I was, and how I hid that as well as I could so that the children would listen to me, and so that the adults around me would help me get them as far away from the danger zone as possible. I don't remember how that dream ended. 

Last night, I dreamed I was on the front lawn of Acadia University's University Hall in my hometown of Wolfville, N.S. Canada, where numerous people were seated. I had two nuclear bombs  - which looked like nothing so much as two World War I shells, an image dug from my memories of an empty shell casing kept in a bookcase in my childhood home - and which I had to somehow get as far away from all of us as possible. I knew I couldn't get them nearly as far from us as necessary, but I used some type of rocket launcher to send them through the air in what I think were two different directions. I remember hoping that they would land at least five miles away, but fearing they wouldn't make it that far. Then I spent the rest of the dream telling people to move away from the walls of every building around us "so you won't have them fall on you when the shock wave hits," and telling them to lie flat with their faces covered. I think I was frustrated that so few people were listening to me. 

I awoke before the bombs went off, but I can hope some of us survived. 

I've spent the day occasionally wondering why the only dreams I seem to remember these days are those in which I'm trying, not very successfully, to save peoples' lives. 

Comments

[cmcmck]

Dreams were the place where I came to know- because I have always dreamed female.

[kaffy_r]

Dreams can get through to us when our waking mind doesn't want to accept something. That's not always easy; sometimes the truth can be brutal or frightening. In your case, it allowed you to see your way forward.

I'm still not quite certain what my "Save the World" dreams are all about. I'm fairly sure I don't have a Messiah complex!

[lokifan]

I think it's rather lovely, but probably also speaks to the frustration of trying to help with the world and not being able to do as much as we want.

I think I was frustrated that so few people were listening to me.

I've SERIOUSLY been there. In March 2020 I had an incredibly unsubtle dream about being on a bus in Italy, and the bus driver was happily chatting to us and had his hands off the wheel. And I shouted at him in Italian (which I do slightly speak) to look at the road, and he was like "it's cool it's cool!" Probably the bus itself would be fine, but we'd clipped a little car and I'd seen another passenger wince but I was the only one who'd seen how bad it really was, and I was like "the others!" because my Italian isn't good enough to say 'maybe WE'LL be fine but - '

And I woke up from this stress dream laughing at the unsubtlety of my subconscious, where this guy is like 'it's fine' without even looking at the bad stuff ahead to try and avoid it, while I shout at him to think of other people IN ITALIAN - this was while the really bad wave of covid there still had Italy firmly in its grasp. I feel like your dream about trying to help save people from weapons and knowing there was a limited amount you could do, but it'd be more if people would JUST LISTEN, isn't too far from that!

[kaffy_r]

I've SERIOUSLY been there. In March 2020 I had an incredibly unsubtle dream about being on a bus in Italy, and the bus driver was happily chatting to us and had his hands off the wheel. And I shouted at him in Italian (which I do slightly speak) to look at the road, and he was like "it's cool it's cool!"

Oh my goodness, it's good to know I'm not the only one with this type of dream! Yours resonates with me. The fact that you were talking to the bus driver in Italian is a true reflection of how detailed our inner life can be, even when we sleep!

[lokifan]

SO detailed - like I remember thinking in the dream that this was good Italian practice, haha. And the fact that I yelled "guardi la strada!" (look at the road!) and then "l'altre!" (the others!) because I was too stressed to put together a longer sentence about being careful not to hit other people!

[kaffy_r]

I remember thinking in the dream that this was good Italian practice

We think some of the strangest things are completely logical in dreams.

Phew

[jesse_the_k]

Those dreams sound stressful!

I am glad you're on Team Save the Universe--we need all the folks we can muster.

Re: Phew

[kaffy_r]

Thanks; Team Save the Universe is a good one to join!