The Journey is the Goal

Last night I had a dream. I think I have dreams every night, but I remembered last night’s dream very clearly after waking up. Unlike other dreams, this dream felt… structured. Usually my dreams are quite surreal, but this one was not. Furthermore, it was in the first-person so it felt incredibly real at the time. I must have felt somewhat moved by the dream because when I woke up, I immediately set about recording it on my phone. (My phone is next to my bed and so is more easily accessible than a pen and paper).

The following is what I wrote in my phone. The lack of a suitable blog-friendly written structure is due to the limited functionality of the device.

I was invited to play a card game with 4 other people. Each of us had a deck. It had the setting of gambling, but no money passed hands. I accepted the invitation without realising that I was not to leave once the game started. We started and I attempted to do as I was told. I was told to select a card to reveal. I selected the King of Hearts because everyone else had; however, because I had shuffled my deck accidentally, it took me a long time to find the card. By the time I did, a lot of time had passed and the others were getting impatient. I was then told I needed to reveal a King of spades. Again I sorted through my deck looking for it. By this time, the atmosphere was palpable and I was feeling very upset. It was at this time I went off at the other players as I sought an exit. I pondered paying everyone for their time, but decided, since this didn’t involve gambling, that that wasn’t reasonable. I left the table and went away, but they called back saying “if you leave now, we can’t guarantee that you’ll still have your jumper which you left here.” I found this threat quite unreasonable so I went back to get my jumper. As I went back, I was accosted by one of the other players who started punching me. I held my arms up in front of me, hoping to protect myself. It worked, but he kept hitting me. Finally, seeing no end in sight, I let down my guard. The punch that was to hit me woke me up.

I don’t go in for dream analysis, so any interpretted symbolism in the dream strikes me as being unsubstantiated. What impressed me most about it was the dream’s coherency. I retreived the card I did because I didn’t know how to play so I was copied everyone else – I do that. I left my jumper behind because, when I’m playing a game, I get hot, so I take them off. I forgot to retreive them in the dream – I do that in real life, too.

The strangest thing I did in the dream was at the very end. I was being punched and I had protected myself well, but I deliberately lowered my guard. If someone was punching me in real life, would I do that? I remember thinking at the time “I’ll take the punch, because if I don’t, they might get tired of punching and do something worse.”

Hold on… I remember thinking? I do remember thinking. I remember thinking I will pay them. I remember feeling uncomfortable that I was making the other players upset with my tardiness. I remember thinking about lowering my guard. I know I have had other dreams in which I’ve ‘thought’. I’m reminded of some guy who said “I think therefore I am.” I can’t remember who it was, but I remember he said this after determining that the only thing that distinguishes reality from a dream is our ability to think within reality (and presumably our inability to think within a dream).

Hmm, looking back, I do remember thinking about reality within dreams – in fact, doing so was a what would wake me up. I believe xkcd sums this up well in one of their comics: http://xkcd.com/557/ Why did I record this dream right after I had it? The shock that I had, within this very real-appearing world, chosen to – effectively – be punished because I felt threatened by possibly worse consequences I guess left me feeling compelled to write it down.

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