Over the years, especially my later years, I have been intrigued by dreams, their content, and why I dreamed about it. Did I do something recently to bring that action into my sleepy mind, or was my dream a wish that the subject matter of my dream would come true? And why do we dream in the first place? There are dozens of medical studies addressing each of these questions, but we arenāt going to pretend to analyze them here.
What I would like to do is relate two recent dreams that perhaps suggest a more ethereal basis for dreams.
In the first, I was attending an out-of-town meeting of corporate executives and, at the end of the last session, the attendees were searching for a means to return them to their individual places of origin. After looking at plane and train schedules, I found a bus headed in my direction, albeit a small vehicle for a modern bus. There were several other people on board and, just before the driver departed, I had a terrible urge to relieve my bladder of the liquids I had consumed at the conference. The bus driver permitted me to disembark, which I did. I walked a few feet away from the bus and did my ābusinessā but, when I turned around, the bus was nowhere to be seen. But, low and behold, another similar bus suddenly appeared, and it was empty. I stepped on board and the driver said he would be pleased to drive me to Miami. Was it possible that the first bus was actually destined for the āfuture lifeā with unknown stops along the way and, having missed its departure, I was instead on my way home to remain in the ācurrent life.ā Depending on the stops planned for that initial bus, missing the bus might have been fortuitous.
A few nights later I dreamed that I was about to step into the shower at my now deceased motherās home when I spotted my deceased sister through my bedroom window who was obviously looking for someone to let her in the house. For some reason, I was concerned about her entering the home and, instead of embracing her presence, I closed the bathroom door and continued with my bathing plans. In real life, my sister welcomed death when the end for her was near, and I have always been sensitive to whether I would similarly succumb if she had the opportunity to convince me to follow her planned demise. Was I afraid to let her in my dream for that reason or was it simply a brother-sister spat? Had I opened the door, would she have taken me with her that night?
The question in the case of both dreams is whether my missing the bus saved me from an untimely departure from this earth and, in the second case, whether I might have chosen to close my last chapter of life had I ushered my sister into our home. In both dreams, someone was waiting to write the last chapter of my life.
Iāll never know what would have happened had I steered a different course, but I guarantee you that Iāll think about it for a long time to come, I may even dream about it!