I dreamed a dream..

Love them or hate them, when we close our eyes we all dream at some time or other. Many of us will not realise that we do for they are so quickly and easily forgotten upon waking. Have you ever experienced the frustration of trying to remember a dream that despite your best efforts slips away without you even realising? I have, to the point that i resolved to keep a notepad beside my bed to pen down my imaginitive nocturnal ramblings. I have always been of the opinion that dreams are the minds way of making sense of what it either cannot or will not whilst we are awake. 

I dream a lot. I have never quite decided whether it is purely because i think too much and have a chaotic mind or whether it simply is because i have a lot of unresolved past residing in the darkest recesses of my brain. Perhaps a mix of the two although i confess i definitely do fall into the overthinkers anonymous group a lot of the time. Still given the fantastical nature of some of my sleep sodden imaginings, i should perhaps be writing them down and turning them into potentially best selling novels. 

Sometimes though a dream will recur and these i do remember. Perhap the sheer repetitiveness of it drums it into my longer term memory for me to muse over and self psychoanalyse at leisure. Lately though a dream has recurred that i do not have to particularly look at in too much depth for i know the source of it very well.

REGRET.

My dream is of my grandmother, i have news she is dying and i am trying frantically to get to her but cannot. I find myself running through a field of deep mud and getting nowhere as is often the case in a dream. As i run i pass people i know and frantically hold out my hands begging for help. One by one they shrug and turn away or just ignore me completely until i say desperately ”But i was there for you!!” Then one parody turns and laughs saying  mockingly ”That doesn’t mean that we are there for you”

The result of the dream is always the same i am so bogged down that i do not make it in time. Whatever the visual interpretation my brain put on it the facts are still the same, i have a lifelong regret that i did not make more time for her in the years leading to her death and this is something i have had to learn to live with because the clock cannot be turned back however much we wish it. Perhaps the bigger regret is the time wasted on meaningless things and on those people who deserved my time much less than she. Whilst i know she would not judge me and never would she think ill of me, still i feel that i have failed.

I have always tried my best not to regret things i cannot change for it does little good and in the end merely holds you back.  The curious thing about this dream however,  was the presence of people within it who either were not present in my life at the time or who have no relevance to the situation. I have not yet concluded what significance they have in the dream but i wonder if perhaps it is my own inner awareness warning me not to make the same mistakes again. Perhaps i am guilty of placing too much importance on things and people who do not matter and neglecting those things and people that could be a cause of regret. Maybe it helps to remember who were those who were those who were there for me when i needed someone and who were those who caused me the pain to need someone in the first place. Whatever the meaning it seems sure that this dream is determined to recur until i have taken heed and acted upon it. 

Life is full of regrets. Some we can live with and some may haunt us for the rest of our lives, emerging in our dreams as sad reminders of the mistakes we have made. I do not want to spend my life running through mud chasing regrets, especially the ones that will be the kind to haunt my dreams. It seems, at least for me, that it is time for change although much thought is needed as to what these changes will be. I cannot ignore the fact that lately i have been less than enamoured with some aspects of my life and a redress is in order. Perhaps then i can return to my fantastical dreams of the purely fantasy nature and sleep more soundly than i have of late. 

Still if one is going to be a Panda then at least one should look like a Panda and thanks to a few sleepless nights i most definitely do.

Sweet dreams everyone!! 

That which i do not know

                                  

Plans, plans plans.

It seems our society thrives on them and for many of us it is a predictability that dictates our lives. We plan every aspect of them with regimental detail and for many of us the resulting order is the only path we feel safe upon. We like to know what will happen and when, from getting up in a morning to when we go to bed. All carefully organised in a familiar routine.

I hate routine. I find it suffocating and i am one of those rare people who hates to plan. I abhorr appointments and preplanned order, partly because i am terrible at remembering to keep them but mostly because i do not like being forced to do things at a certain time. I am very much a whim person, if i want a haircut i want it done the same day or i do not bother but this works very well for me.

So with the passing of the Yuletide holidays, waving goodbye to christmas, as usual my friends are planning planning planning. Holidays, Easter, Birthdays, going to the gym, family get togethers and even those christmases yet to come. No sooner has one ended than another one is already in the planning department being drawn up for final review. However i try i just cannot seem to bring myself to think further forward than a month at the very most. Oh of course i have hopes and dreams like everyone else but i would never begin to forward think on any of them.

If i am honest i would have to admit that unlike most people i am not afraid of the unknown but more likely the complete opposite. It is the fear that what i do know will be taken away that scares me most of all. So often the unpredictable comes along to scupper any plans you have made and then perhaps it is all the more painful because you had expected things to happen or for situations to be a certain way. Instead you are left devastated when your hopes and plans are shattered because it was not as you had imagined it should be. So no i do not plan, i do not take for granted that what i have and where i am now will stand to be the same a month from today. I am too afraid to want for certain things to happen or for certain things to stay the same. So i expect for change and loss and should it not transpire then i am only left gladdened and never disappointed. Perhaps if in the back of your mind some small part of you expects to lose that which you have, it makes you value it all the more rather than taking for granted.

Is it any way to live a life, secretly fearing? Perhaps not, but as i listen to those friends making plans for many months from now i cannot help but wonder how many of them will actually get to see those plans transpire. I should like to hope they all will but experience tells me it shall not be so. I do not know where i shall be  a year from now, i will never imagine or even plan for it to be any particular way. Life has a funny way of working out exactly how it is supposed to now matter what we try and do about it.

For now that is enough.

Through a door just like Alice

Curiouser and curiouser.

As far as the eye can see the doors stretch in an endless colourful sea, all so very different neither uniform nor alike. Some catch the eye more than others being gaudy and opulent, designed to draw the eye and the beholder like a magpie to some shiny coveted bauble. Others less assuming, meek and drab, so easily dismissed and passed by unless one had reason to tarry and examine them more closely. I cannot tarry i am looking for something.

I am here and this is me. My doors are there for a reason and each one hides behind it some memory or some thought that i have filed away for perusal at my leisure. Some doors do not stay shut and the contents seep around its edges reaching for my feet bidding me come and dwell a while within but i know i do not want to go there. Some inner sense of me alerts a warning that i know not from where but i shall heed it for it has been my constant companion and i know it almost as well as it knows me.

Something is seeking me or perhaps i am seeking it, i do not know. All i feel is that i am looking for something but i know not what, only that i shall know when i have found it. Behind this door then? So pretty and bright, leading me to think some rare happy memory resides within and i am happy to approach it. Even as my hand reaches out some instinct tells me this is not a happy place, some indistinct growl resonates from within stirring a familiar alarm making me snatch my outstretched hand away from its reach. Familiar a feeling yet i do not know what lives behind this door only that i do not want to go there. A lesson i have learned so well and i trust my instincts when they tell me what i cannot know.

A smaller door then? Something less obvious and unobtrusive and my eyes scan the row after row hoping something will stand out and suggest that i choose it but all remains as it was before. Nothing remarkable at all and i wonder that i should be so ordered when i sense such unseen chaos within. The nearest then and i choose one so small and dull as to be barely noticed, hesitating briefly before looking inside. This one i know, so small a feeling yet also so happy, still now frowning i realise it occupies so small a room. Why?

Door after door, some i will open but the greater i will not and i speed my steps to hasten my search. I must find it? But what? How strange this need to find something of which i am afraid and it leads me to frown as i turn this way and that with still no idea of where i am headed. I am afraid of this place i do not like to come here and i wish that i could turn and run back the way i came, back where it is safe. Yet i do not, cannot and so i must keep searching hoping i find what i seek before i am lost behind a door not of my choosing.

Doors, so many doors. An endless colourful sea of unassuming facades that stretch as far as the eye can see. I am here and here is me. Through a door just like Alice i chased my white rabbit and now i am lost save only for the grin of a cheshire cat who smiles yet does not smile.

I am here and this is me, i wonder can you find me?

Through a door just like Alice

Curiouser and curiouser.

As far as the eye can see the doors stretch in an endless colourful sea, all so very different neither uniform nor alike. Some catch the eye more than others being gaudy and opulent, designed to draw the eye and the beholder like a magpie to some shiny coveted bauble. Others less assuming, meek and drab, so easily dismissed and passed by unless one had reason to tarry and examine them more closely. I cannot tarry i am looking for something.

I am here and this is me. My doors are there for a reason and each one hides behind it some memory or some thought that i have filed away for perusal at my leisure. Some doors do not stay shut and the contents seep around its edges reaching for my feet bidding me come and dwell a while within but i know i do not want to go there. Some inner sense of me alerts a warning that i know not from where but i shall heed it for it has been my constant companion and i know it almost as well as it knows me.

Something is seeking me or perhaps i am seeking it, i do not know. All i feel is that i am looking for something but i know not what, only that i shall know when i have found it. Behind this door then? So pretty and bright, leading me to think some rare happy memory resides within and i am happy to approach it. Even as my hand reaches out some instinct tells me this is not a happy place, some indistinct growl resonates from within stirring a familiar alarm making me snatch my outstretched hand away from its reach. Familiar a feeling yet i do not know what lives behind this door only that i do not want to go there. A lesson i have learned so well and i trust my instincts when they tell me what i cannot know.

A smaller door then? Something less obvious and unobtrusive and my eyes scan the row after row hoping something will stand out and suggest that i choose it but all remains as it was before. Nothing remarkable at all and i wonder that i should be so ordered when i sense such unseen chaos within. The nearest then and i choose one so small and dull as to be barely noticed, hesitating briefly before looking inside. This one i know, so small a feeling yet also so happy, still now frowning i realise it occupies so small a room. Why?

Door after door, some i will open but the greater i will not and i speed my steps to hasten my search. I must find it? But what? How strange this need to find something of which i am afraid and it leads me to frown as i turn this way and that with still no idea of where i am headed. I am afraid of this place i do not like to come here and i wish that i could turn and run back the way i came, back where it is safe. Yet i do not, cannot and so i must keep searching hoping i find what i seek before i am lost behind a door not of my choosing.

Doors, so many doors. An endless colourful sea of unassuming facades that stretch as far as the eye can see. I am here and here is me. Through a door just like Alice i chased my white rabbit and now i am lost save only for the grin of a cheshire cat who smiles yet does not smile.

I am here and this is me, i wonder can you find me?