August | In Your Dreams
A DREAM COLUMN
Hello, again, dear dreamers. Welcome back to In Your Dreams, the monthly column where we take a closer look at what the unconscious might be telling us while we sleep. Summer is in full swing, and it’s a friggin’ scorcher. Dreams are known to get a little kooky in the heat. Let’s see if this month’s dreamer has been able to keep cool…
I dreamt I was watering my yard (a dream yard, I don’t have a real yard) when giant blob-looking balloons appeared at the end of the block, floating toward me. I didn’t want them to land in the grass, so I pushed them away with my hands, but they were awkward and heavy and took several big shoves to get them to move on. Some even boomeranged around and came back a couple times, but eventually I pushed them all away. Then I looked down and the spot I’d been watering had sprouted full grown potato plants. I pulled them out of the ground but instead of potatoes I pulled up these pathetic roots that looked like weird long hairs. I tried to put them back in the ground but the damage had been done, and I felt like I really messed up. Other than the fact that I probably shouldn’t plant a garden any time soon, what does this dream mean?
We’re not exactly green thumbers over here at In Your Dreams, but give us plants of the mind, and we’ve got plenty to say. Gardens are connected with growth and abundance, provided you put in the work, and it melts our hearts a bit, thinking about you tending your plot with such care. Are you cultivating anything in your life right now? Maybe a creative project, new hobby, or romantic relationship? Or maybe you’re just putting in the time to befriend the grumpy guy at the farmer’s market with the best plums.
Whatever the *thing* is, if you tend it, it will grow, as they say, or something. Work hard, see results. That’s baked right into the American Dream. And when it works out like that, it’s a beautiful thing. But other times! Oh, the other times, when we work hard, we toil, we push balloons away again and again like Sisyphus, and at the end, when we’re ready to receive our reward after all the blood, sweat, and tears, we pull up nothing. Well, next to nothing. A fistful of tuberous hairs (ew).
So what happens then? It’s hard not to feel like a failure when things don’t turn out the way we wanted. Cruelly, the world is neutral to our hopes and dreams, and hard work isn’t always enough. Sure, you handled the balloons, but while you were busy waging war against the poor man’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, maybe something else was going on. You could’ve underwatered, or overwatered, or planted too early, or too late, or had an unseasonable frost or low nitrogen, or were invaded by crows, or maybe the hairs were supposed to look like that and we’re just being jerks.
Or maybe the plants needed a little something from those balloons after all. Wouldn’t that be a twist.
There are a million ways to fail, and so many of them are out of our control.
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There are a million ways to fail, and so many of them are out of our control. It’s actually pretty amazing that anything comes together at all, ever, when you think about it. Failure comes for us all and there’s camaraderie in that. People before you have had to shake it off, and move on, and you can, too. Take appropriate accountability, but dwelling on your mistakes will keep you stuck in the past, rather than reaching toward more growth.
But we’re sorry about your taters, buddy. It’s rotten to have nothing to show for your hard work. Don’t let it stop you from trying again. The world needs your potatoes! You’ve got a leg up on last time, when you’re ready. And in the meantime, find use for your harvest. Make lemonade out of lemons, as it were. Except you’ll need to go to the store for those, for obvious reasons.
If you’ve ever woken up from a dream like, ‘what the hell was that’ and would like to be featured in the next In Your Dreams, contact us at dreams@lunya.co with a detailed description of the inner workings of your unconscious mind. We're dreaming of hearing from you.
