in my dreams

I had a couple of dreams last night that are a good example of how daily events can creep into the realm of dreams. I rarely remember what I dream about, so I thought I'd write about these two dreams.

My first dream of the evening occurred shortly after I fell asleep on the couch. We had been watching "Mythbusters", and as is frequently the case on the show, they had been blowing stuff up. One explosion that we saw had a mushroom cloud. I believe I previously mentioned in a post or a tag that I had dreams about disasters and apocalyptic events, and that's what this first dream was--a nuclear war. There was one mushroom cloud in the distance, and then another and another...and then a shockwave knocked me into a wall. Being knocked into the wall in my dream actually woke me up. I asked the little lady, who was still sitting on the couch and reading, if there had been any loud noises or anything else that could have woken me up, and there hadn't been. I guess some dreams are pretty powerful.

I went to bed shortly after I woke up from the nuclear holocaust, and had another dream in which I was at a friend's house, in her backyard. I was on one side of the backyard, and her children were on the other. Even though I did or offered to do nice things for her, she ignored me as if I wasn't there. I finally went up to her and looked her in the eye, only to discover that cataracts covered most of her eyes. The only part of her eyes that wasn't covered was a part on the left side which would allow her to see her children. Now, why she couldn't hear me remains a mystery, as I woke up shortly after discovering the cataracts.

There were a number of things I saw or discussed with the little lady yesterday that I believe contributed to this dream. First, I watched "The Messenger", a movie about Joan of Arc. She was burned alive by the Catholic church for supposed heresy--something that I can't recall being condoned anywhere in the Bible. Later, I discussed with the little lady how the Spaniards quickly conquered the Incan empire in the early 1500s. The Spaniards killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, and when you read their personal accounts, they believed they were fully justified in their killing due to the fact that the Incans were "infidels"--also not condoned by the Bible. Shortly thereafter, we watched "He's Just Not That Into You". In the movie, one of the characters becomes uncomfortable talking to a woman who isn't his wife, but later decides to be her friend when he decides that there's no reason why being married should mean that a person can no longer talk to members of the opposite sex. Now, he ends up having an affair with this woman, but that's beside the point. More often than not, this is not the case.

To me, the unifying theme in all of these examples is a poor choice or an opportunity lost due to personally held but untested/incorrect beliefs or notions. My dream was most closely related to the example of the married spouse not being friends with a member of the opposite sex, but also had a twist of religious reasoning thrown in.

Fortunately, neither dream is all that realistic. I've had dreams in the past that were so close to reality (such dreams are usually work-related) that I've mistakenly confused dreams with reality. Not a good thing. And even if neither dream was all that pleasant, I'd rather dream about thermonuclear detonations and having my friendship rejected than work--the usual subject of my dreams these days.