JanDunlap.com

Where do you go when you dream?

I’m not asking a metaphysical question here. I’m curious to know what places pop up in other people’s dreams. Both my husband and I frequently revisit the college we attended. We recognize the dorms, the classroom buildings, the quad and the cafeteria. My dreams tend to focus on being late for classes during my college career, which is odd, since I don’t think I was ever late for a single one. My husband’s dreams seem to focus on specific classes he took. Either way, going back to college in our dreams isn’t exactly refreshing or soothing. Usually, I wake up feeling tense, while my husband just chalks it up to the idiosyncrasies of restless neurons.

My daughter, however, has a great dream place. She goes to a beautiful resort on the shores of Lake Superior.

“How do you do that?” I asked her one morning after she related yet another lovely dream about her place on the lake.

“Do what?”

“Get a resort as your dream place,” I answered. “I end up back in college, with tiny dorm rooms, noisy roommates, and lousy food. You get a lodge, peace and quiet, and a four-star chef.”

She smiled and shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”

Lucky, I can understand.

But fair?

Not for one REM moment.

“I want a resort for my dream place,” I complained to my husband. “How come she gets one? She’s only fourteen. She doesn’t need a restful refuge. I’m the one who needs a refuge. I’m going crazy here in real life. I work with college students, for crying out loud. Talk about stress! When I go to sleep, I WANT to escape reality. I thought that dreams are supposed to be a way of your unconscious processing stressful events that happen in real life and that those dreams are then supposed to yield answers to your problems. Believe me, I would be happy to go to a North Shore resort every time I close my eyes to sleep. And I have no doubt my unconscious could solve all my problems just as easily at a gorgeous inn on Lake Superior as it labors at doing the same thing at our collegiate stomping grounds. So why does she get the resort and I don’t?”

“I guess you don’t get to pick the locations of your dreams,” he replied.

“Says who?”

“Your super-ego, I guess,” he said. “Or maybe it’s the id. I always get those two mixed up. Ego, I know. I work with a ton of Egos, and believe me, you can’t tell an Ego anything.”

Good point. Then it dawned on me: subliminal messages. If advertising companies relied on subliminal messages to control consumer behavior, why couldn’t I use subliminal messages to control my unconscious? If I understood the strategy correctly, all I had to do was keep suggesting to myself – like a million times a day – how gratifying it would be for my super-ego to provide resorts for my dream settings.

So I gave it a try. First thing in the morning, I started visualizing a serene North Shore resort. By lunchtime, I had the whole lodge minutely detailed in my imagination. By mid-afternoon, the chefs were already starting the gourmet dinner. By bedtime, I could practically feel the texture of the thick towels by the double-wide Jacuzzi hot tub. I was so excited to visit my dream site that I lay awake for hours, wondering if I’d have time in my dream to light a fire in the massive stone fireplace and sip a glass of wine by candlelight, or if I’d have to settle for just listening to the waves of Lake Superior lapping against the shore.

As it was, I didn’t get to do either once I finally fell asleep, because I found myself back in my college dorm room once again. Only this time, I was dreaming in my dream about my dream resort.

So much for subliminal messages.

So much for my super-ego.

In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that dreaming as stress relief is overrated. Especially since my unconscious has apparently assigned me to perpetual residence in a college dorm room. For crying out loud, if I want to spend time in a college dorm room, I can go hang out with any one of my students and experience the real thing: left-over pizza in greasy boxes, overflowing laundry baskets, music blaring into the wee hours of the morning, and candy bars for breakfast. Talk about stress.

Then again, I suppose there could be worse places for me to dream about. I should be thankful I’m not doing dream calisthenics in the Sahara Desert, or eating crickets along the Amazon, or cutting up whale blubber in the Arctic. Maybe my unconscious is doing me a favor by sending me back to college in my dreams. At least I’m warm and safe there, and if the only problem I’m processing is worrying about being late for class, then I’d say I’m in pretty good shape, after all. In fact, maybe my life isn’t nearly as stressful as I thought it was, and I don’t need to escape in my dreams.

Then again, maybe it is just a matter of luck what dream place your restless neurons throw your way. If that’s the case, I’m going to start listening more carefully to my daughter, because she’s obviously the one with the dream luck in the family; I mean, she got the resort. Now if she can just start dreaming about winning lottery numbers…..