100 Business Days Out: Day 86 - Window Panes

Back on Day 9 of this (maybe overly exhausted set of blogs on one topic?) 100 Business Day out journey, I talked about the return of dreaming into my life. Over the many weeks since that post, my dreaming has continued and in fact expanded into a much more creative set of dreams and recurrences. In the last month, each night there are people in my dreams who I have not thought of or remembered since I was a child or in many years. Names and faces of people who I might have met once or twice have come back to me and I can see and hear them as if they are here with me now. It's really been amazing. What my dreams have also consisted of have been every abstract thoughts on many random topics. Where in the past, while working, my dreams would revolve around work and things that took place in the day, or were to just become extended meetings in my head to work out problems or anticipate conversations and situations that might be coming the next day. But now, I find that the dreams are less catalyzed by daily events or things that happen but instead more deeply instigated from somewhere else. For example, I had a dream the other night, and again last night, about the window panes of our lives. That is, that our lives are like a six paned window where each pane represents an important aspect of our lives that we want to keep intact and clean. What the dream said to me is that the broken window theory is true in our own lives as well. The theory is that when one pane of glass in a window is broken and not repaired that it becomes an easy target for someone to pick up a stone and knock out another until they are all shattered. And the same is true in our lives. If we have a pane that is cracked or gone all together the others (and the inside of our lives) stand to be so much more vulnerable thus it becomes imperative to ensure that we are constantly doing preventative maintenance to ensure that the panes in our lives are strong and intact. What I saw in my dream were the panes of my life being: Spiritual, Physical, Relationships, Vocational, Mental and Financial. What was interesting to me was that when (in my dream) there were cracks in any one of the ones above, that they all became targets to be the next one to be put out. Not your ordinary dream and a dream that I got to, I believe because my mind is clearer and less cluttered than any other time I can remember. This journey is turning out to be one of interesting revelations and if I get it right, then maybe my window panes are not only triple-pane strength but also clean and clear to see right through to the other side.

100 Business Days Out: Day 9 - Dreaming

A long time ago, in one of the magazines like Men’s Life, Esquire, Details, etc., I remember an author who had been laid-off and went traveling and he wrote about 50 days away with his wife and what it was like. I kept that article for a long time because one of the things he said started to happen to him after a few weeks was that he began dreaming again. I was fascinated and I wondered first, why we don’t dream as much when we are stressed and if one’s dreaming pattern would change if under less stress…or maybe when away from the workplace. I was skeptical. But, today, I am less skeptical than before. Because, what is happening to me is that I am starting to dream again. I have just begun to notice that I found myself remembering that I spent the night dreaming and on multiple topics. I’ve always been one who can go to sleep quickly (much to Patti’s chagrin) but I never could tell you that I dreamed (which, I have since learned that everyone does, but no everyone can remember) or if I did, I certainly couldn’t remember. Instead, I felt that my nights were full of working out problems and that my brain was rehearsing tomorrow’s script for the hard meeting, or working out how to make a problem go away, or just trying to come up with the next creative idea. So, subconsciously, I think, like the rest of life and priorities, I wouldn’t let myself dream freely. That would be wasting time or brainwaves. So, I must have been suppressing the real/fun dreams. But now I can take that governor off and let my dreams come freely. And that is what it is starting to feel like. Oh by the way, I still have the 3AM wake-up call (more about that tomorrow) but it’s now a different wake-up reason. Happy dreaming!