I dreamt that I was at my grandma’s house with my brother and a relative of mine. This relative pulled out some foreign currency and was going to give it to my brother. I got infuriated and said something like, “What?! Everyone knows I collect foreign currency . . . I’m the only one who does. Why are you giving him the foreign currency when he doesn’t collect it?” This made me really mad. As I stormed out I thought I could see that she was thinking about at least giving me some. The next thing I knew I was wandering around downtown, as I often do.
(This dream bewildered me for hours. Interestingly, I was planning on wandering around downtown the next day. The past week has been a very stressful one and I wanted to wander around to ‘unwind’, as I often do. As I travelled downtown, I found myself getting upset about things and annoyed. I kept thinking about things about this society that I despised and how it didn’t represent me at all and that my own country is turning into a society that reflects no values I believe in. All this thought hurt and caused a pain in me. I felt like moving somewhere else. I knew that this was really my ‘venting’ of the stress I have had this past week. This is not uncommon for me to do. It is a way for me to express an outlet of my frustrations. Not only that, I knew it would happen. It turns out that this ‘knowing’, or predicting, of what would happen is the cause of the dream. In the dream I felt abondoned, forgotten, and neglected. But, you see, that is actually what I am seeking when I ‘wander around’. I used to always say that “I like to wander around downtown because I become like everyone else, a nobody, another face in the crowd”. It is a way of ‘getting away’. But, what perplexed me was the pain I felt in the dream, the pain of neglect and being forgotten. Why did this appear? I wanted to wander around to seek this sense of being ‘forgetten’ but in the dream it was like the opposite . . . it hurt. After some time I knew why. When I wander around I do more than wander around . . . I contemplate-like. This requires a sense of separation from my self. It’s not uncommon that this separation is painful and hurts. In fact, almost all the time when I go hiking, wandering, or contemplating there is an initial phase of pain, of hurting as a prelude to contemplation. This, as I said, is a result of separation of oneself. Once this pain is overcome I feel ‘removed’ from myself and can contemplate and become productive. The pain, in the dream, is a reference to the pain of separation I knew I would feel. If I did not achieve this separation I would not ‘calm down’ that well. The dream, then, is just an anticipation of this event.)
