There are people who believe very strongly that there is a deeper meaning to the dreams we have. There was one occasion, after overhearing me describe a dream about looking into a cracked mirror, a co-worker said, "That means that you are either suffering with vanity of a lack of self esteem." Sure, I can see that, I suppose. Though I took it to mean that I was living in a home of perpetual disrepair. I owned a fixer-upper at the time. Oh wait, I'm inhabiting another one now. But, I digress.
There was a time when I really wanted to know the deeper meaning of my dreams - convinced that they possessed answers to the questions burning in my heart. But it has long since been my belief that, for the most part, dreams offer us an escape from life or suffering or, well, reality. And, sometimes dreams are just an intricate story, woven by our mind, to deal with something happening on the other side of consciousness. Like the sound of someone snoring next to you...
So here's a dream for you... I'm walking through a posh department store in search of a bathroom. I ask various people, including some rather snobbish sales associates, but all they do is point. So I walk in the specified direction, but everywhere I expect to find a restroom, I simply wind up in another department. I finally come around a rack of clothes and see a shiny white porcelain toilet sitting there in plain site. "This can't be the bathroom, right?", I asked myself as I looked around at the other shoppers who seemed unaffected by the toilet sitting there for all to see.
Hoping this was just an odd display, I moved along - continuing my search. As I walked into the shoe department, there it was... another "public" bathroom. Department after department, it was the same thing. It was becoming painfully clear. If I needed a bathroom, I was going to have to go where everyone could watch.
So, what did this dream mean? Am I afraid of exposing myself in public? Do I dream of having a toilet in my closet so I can admire my clothes and shoes while I go? Do posh department stores make me uneasy? Well, since I no longer work with an interpreter of dreams, I may never know. All I can tell you is, when I woke from that dream, there was only one lingering thought going through my mind - "I have to pee!"
*Note: My sister in law inspired this latest thought of mine when she posted about a strange dream she had where she traveled through a labyrinth of bathrooms in search of a clean toilet. In reading her post, I was relieved that I wasn't the only one to have these kinds of dreams. I guess that means one of two things - I'm either not weird or I'm not alone in being so.
