I teach sensemaking and mindshifting. I know that dreams are one way that our minds help us interpret and make sense of the world.
I’m probably too close to these dreams to really evaluate them. I’m hoping that perhaps some of you can comment with your impressions.
Dream one
The first dream involved remembering some past events, and they really did take place. When I was about 7, one of my friends was Doug Pirrie (I have no idea if the spelling is correct). I vividly remember two of the times we were playing together, and they came back in the dream.
There was always a nice wind blowing along the side of his house. We would go there to blow bubbles and make what we called “bubble history”. We would blow bubbles and then measure how far the bubbles travelled before popping. We took his dad’s tape measure from the garage, and would try creating multiple bubbles, single bubbles, small bubbles, large bubbles, blowing bubbles pointing straight up, blowing them pointing to the side, blowing them pointed forwards. As 7-8 year olds, we were sure that one of us was making the longest distance ever traveled by a soap bubble, either in the world, or in Connecticut, or at least on Archer Avenue. I remember how excited we were when we talked to our parents about how we were going to be famous as bubble blowers.
Another memory that flashed back in the dream was us building marbles “golf courses” in his back yard. The back yard was sloped. A “hole” consisted of a starting place and below that a barrier to stop the marble. You would aim the marble at the barrier, and if you got the barrier to stop the marble, you could move to the next hole. If not, you had to try again until you succeeded. The lowest score for 9 holes won. We would build and play for hours.
These were such happy memories of kids being kids, and they were framed by the final memory. I remembered 25 years later seeing the headline and article that Doug Pirrie had been shot and killed as he was attempting an armed robbery of a convenient store. This is also unfortunately true.
I was seven. He was eight. We were just two kids being kids. How did our lives go in such different directions, why did those memories come back so vividly last night, and what can we all take out of this?
Dream two
In this dream, somehow my wife and I had a second grader living with us. She was not our child, our children were already grown, but she was ours for at least the school year.
In her class, the teacher assigned the students to put together a “book” on what they did during the summer. Our child created 40 or 50 drawings of her summer. Some of them she labeled with words. Sometimes she would put 2, 3, or 4 drawings on a page. On some pages, there were drawings on both sides of the page. Some of the drawings were made in pencil. Some were in crayon. Sometimes she would draw and then fill in the colors with crayons or colored pencils. She spent the entire weekend happily drawing, painting, telling us the stories of what she did or what she made up that she did, and showing us her work.
When I went to class and met her teacher, the teacher told me that she’d given our child a zero on the project. Here was the explanation:
The children were supposed to draw five pictures. Each picture had to be on a separate page. Below each picture they had to write a three word sentence about the picture: a subject, a verb, and an object. They were to use one side of the paper, not two sides.
In the dream, I thanked the teacher, with our daughter there:
Thank you. Our daughter is going to learn very good structure from you. She has an incredible talent for storytelling, there are so many stories and pictures bursting inside her that they can’t wait to get out. One day she is going to be a famous storyteller, people from all around the world are going to be waiting anxiously for her stories, and you will have been an important molder of her talent, helping her learn the skills to bring these stories to life, and when people ask her what influenced her, she is going to be able to tell everyone that you helped her with the structures and craft of writing.
The teacher’s answer was
In this class we do things a certain way. Your child got a zero because she did not follow our way. If she does what I say in the future maybe she can start getting passing grades. If you can’t discipline her to follow my instructions, then she going to continue to fail this year. I don’t see any evidence of any talent, she just needs to learn to follow my directions. She will have many chances, the children are going to be making these 5 page books all year long and the instructions are always the same.
This seemed so real as I was dreaming, and while horrifying in one sense, the fact that as a parent I could still help my child blossom seems a large mitigator. But again, why now and what's the message for all of us?
Please let me know about your interpretations of these messages, and you can learn more about Mindshifting here.