These past few weeks I been having these odd dreams about stuff I did growing up. I keep having this dream that I'm back in high school talking to old friends I have not seen in years. After I wake up I start thinking about things I did as a kid and start feeling sad.

Has any one had dreams of things they did as a kid like me? If so does it make you miss stuff you use to do & does it make you sad?

What do you think these kind of dreams I been having mean? I wonder why they make me feel so blue.

I think you're talking about a universal human experience here, Pace~Ace. All people with any claim to being truly human feel sadness for the unfortunate, but inescapable, loss of treasured experiences that time inflicts on us.

You do not need to resort to any Freudian interpretation of dreams in order to explain this sadness you feel. It is part of the human condition. Your dreams mean just what you've said yourself they do: you miss the past, and for good reason: it is part of what you are, and when it dies, a part of you dies, too. Sorry, but that's the sad truth we all live with.

Pop psycholgy, with its slogans about "living in the present, not in the past" are shallow and ultimately phony. Ignore that kind of trash (and grief counselors who toss around empty words like "closure"), for it ignores the fact that we are in great part what we merely remember ourselves to be. The greatest writers have always understood this. I think of what Faulkner wrote: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." I think, too, of D.H. Lawrence's great poem "Piano," which is his memory of his mother singing to him in the parlor while playing. The last line of this beautiful poem is "And I weep like a child for the past."

[This message was edited by maiku on 09-16-03 at 08:38 PM.]

Thanks maiku, what you said made a lot of sense to me.

When I have dreams of these memories I feel good while I'm dreaming but when I wake I miss them and I feel sad and wish they were more than just memories.

I love the last line of that poem too.

"And I weep like a child for the past."

I've done a study (my own) where I've recorded my dreams for 7 years. It's excitingly interesting as in - it's a diary (incognito) for myself!

I finally remembered as many as, ummm 4 or more dreams per nite and recorded them.

Only I KNOW what was happening in MY life during each entry of that journal!

It was very interesting.

Even though I'm young I have dreams about childhood also. Then I wakeup wishing I was a kid again.
Maiku really explained it well.

Ron, I do the same thing when I wakeup.
I miss the fun stuff I did as a kid.

My childhood was an exercise in horror. Whenever I have a dream about it, I wake up happy I'm not a kid anymore!

I wish I could remember my good dreams, but I only remember the nightmares.