Dreams are supposed to give you messages about your secret desires and fears. If this is the case, then what I most desire/fear is boredom. My dreams in recent years have become staggeringly dull. The dullest of all was experienced two nights ago. In the dream, I was working in an office. The other people there were friendly but unstimulating. The office-building was a drab three-storey building from the 1950s with long corridors. There must have been a factory behind the office-block because I saw large groups of workingmen arrive and leave through some ornate gates in front of the building. In the dream, I was still living with my parents in Shirley, and I would catch a number 18 bus from a stop on the Stratford Road to get to the office, which seemed to be somewhere in Birmingham. The dream was devoid of any mystery or sense of strangeness, except that the number 18 bus never seemed to arrive, and I was forced to take other buses with unfamiliar routes and destinations.
It is possible, of course, that dreams do not reveal desires or fears, but just re-assemble new and old memories into narrative strings. I did once work in a 1950s office-block in front of a factory during a university vacation in 1967. This was repetitive work using a primitive adding machine called a ‘comptometer’, recording the orders for ice-cream collected by the team of saleswomen in the office who were on the phone all day to various shops. I caught the number 18 bus to work not at that time, but later in my life when I lived and worked in Birmingham. What evoked these memories and connected them to present experience? Perhaps it was the realisation that although my life includes satisfaction and stimulation, it also has its share of tedium.
The ratio of tedium to stimulation has shifted in the last week with the end of my teaching this year for the University of the Third Age (U3A). This involves leading a two-hour session once a fortnight to a group of very bright retired people. Each session deals with a different topic in social sciences, such as religion, learning and skills, crime, and ageing. I have previously studied only a few of these topics, and so most sessions require a frantic search through the relevant social science writing and recent research to assemble my presentation. This is certainly stimulating mentally, and so are the following discussions. Teaching starts again in January, with a session on happiness. So my dreams should become less mundane next month.
It is possible, of course, that dreams do not reveal desires or fears, but just re-assemble new and old memories into narrative strings. I did once work in a 1950s office-block in front of a factory during a university vacation in 1967. This was repetitive work using a primitive adding machine called a ‘comptometer’, recording the orders for ice-cream collected by the team of saleswomen in the office who were on the phone all day to various shops. I caught the number 18 bus to work not at that time, but later in my life when I lived and worked in Birmingham. What evoked these memories and connected them to present experience? Perhaps it was the realisation that although my life includes satisfaction and stimulation, it also has its share of tedium.
The ratio of tedium to stimulation has shifted in the last week with the end of my teaching this year for the University of the Third Age (U3A). This involves leading a two-hour session once a fortnight to a group of very bright retired people. Each session deals with a different topic in social sciences, such as religion, learning and skills, crime, and ageing. I have previously studied only a few of these topics, and so most sessions require a frantic search through the relevant social science writing and recent research to assemble my presentation. This is certainly stimulating mentally, and so are the following discussions. Teaching starts again in January, with a session on happiness. So my dreams should become less mundane next month.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments welcome