Well at least it wasn't another one of those Clown Sharks

"Strange" and "Dream" basically are synonyms, we all know that. When somebody says "I had a strange dream" I always wonder if they ever have "normal" dreams. I don't. All my dreams are strange, and I tend to remember many of them. Often times I just laugh them off and forget about them. Sometimes I ponder on them for a few minutes, even an hour or two until I get them figured out. (things like dodging sharks with clown faces painted on them while getting yelled at by one of them that you know represents a certain person in your life are pretty obvious to me...) Sometimes if they really intrigue me I think about them for days.

Last week while I was killing time at the mall while the kids were seeing a movie I had no interest in, I visited the bookstore. There I found a dream interpretation book on sale for just a couple of bucks. I couldn't resist it. I brought it home and began perusing it just about anytime I found myself with a few free minutes. Its fun and some of the interpretations really do make sense, or when combined with the interpretations of other images really pull an idea together which makes sense for me personally.

I happened on this book on the same day I had a dream about being in a bus with a tour guide driving past a dry lake which had depth markers all over it. The lake bottom was dry and cracked, "parched" might be a good word for it. There had clearly not been water in the lake for a period of time. The area surrounding it was totally barren. It was a canyon lake surrounded by tall, not quite treacherous, but not exactly welcoming mountains. As we drove around the lake, I was intrigued by the cracks and crevices and the total lack of water. Each depth marker was clear and easy to read, but the tour guide spoke up and said "the problem here is that nobody really knows the actual depth of these parts." I remember thinking to myself (in the dream)-"huh? What does he mean? I can see quite clearly that A: its so shallow the depth doesn't matter, and B: THERE'S MARKERS! C: This man doesn't know what he's talking about."

Needless to say, since I'm blogging this one, for somereason this dream stuck with me, so I referred to my handy-dandy "10,000 Dreams Explained" only to find that "Dry Lake Bed " is not one of the pre-explained dreams. I did however look up the meanings of the individual images and came up with the following:

The Lake represents creativity, the fact that its dried up ought to be self explanatory. I don't seem to have an original idea in me lately on any creative front. I'm thinking the shallowness represents the fact that maybe I was just never that creative to start with! You know how "they" say some kids have only so much good in them per day and once its used its gone? I think that goes for me for creativity and I must have used it all up on something else, although I have no idea what. I'm choosing to interpret the tour guide to be those people out there who perceive me to be creative and keep telling me there's more there to tap. As for the road, obviously a road represents a journey, and unfortunately, I seem to be headed for some rocky, not entirely welcoming, mountainous territory. I know what those mountains represent and its a task ahead of me that I feel capable of completing, but not entirely enthusiastic about completing. I know soon I will be called upon to complete some tasks that will definitely be outside of my comfort zone--lets call it "opportunities for spiritual growth." The good news is...no creativity required! (or in other words, no, I'm not the home-making counselor and so nobody will suffer from exposure to my barren wasteland, void of the ability to create.)

The real message for me, I do believe, is that I better stop worrying about how creative I may or may not be and start gearing up for a long climb. I'm ok with that. Its a little liberating to decide that I don't need to be creative. There's plenty of time for those reservoirs to fill again and drain once again. If for now my focus needs to be on less "fun" things...so be it. I'm game. Bring on that mountain, I have a decent pair of hiking boots, I'll manage. And like I said, at least there were no clown-faced sharks, those guys are really annoying.