Ever have nightmares? I do. All the time. Here is a very upsetting, recurring dream:
The setting: end of a semester in college. I’m enrolled in a class, but never attended. I meant to drop the class but didn’t. The final is tomorrow. I’m very anxious and hysterically running around campus trying to fingure out what to do. Finally I wake up with my heart pounding. Very disturbing dream. Have had this dream for years.
New wrinkle. Two weeks ago I had the dreaded failure dream. Something different happened. In the midst of the chaos, I said to myself in the dream, “Wait. You are 78 years old. Does your future career depend on your grades? No. Or, graduating? No. Or getting that perfect job? No. What the hell are you worried about, Rick? Who cares if you get a big fat ‘F?’ Zero people. In fact, I could rack up ten ‘Fs’ and it would make no difference to my future. Soon enought my future will be in eternity. If there is a god, or after life, I doubt very much he, she, or it will give a rat’s ass about my college transcript. Nope. While my ten ‘Fs’ will go on my “permanent record,” I’ve heard that in paradise they don’t give a shit about my college transcripts. Ha. Haven’t had the dream since.
Seems to me 60 years of nightmares is enough incentive to pay attention to that attendance record while in college . . . but then, I may have to endure being labeled a candy ass for all eternity.
Wow, you were really able to get into your own dream and control the content? It’s called “lucid dreaming.” I’ve always hoped I could do that but never have. I’m impressed. And happy you have resolved this. congratulations!
Can’t believe it! I have a similar dream, and I wake up – a mess. In my dream, I did not intend to drop the class. I just stopped attending, and I do not take the final. I get a letter indicating that I have to take the final, or my Degree is invalid. And, you are right, at this stage of the game – who cares?
Weird….I too have the same dream. I’m at Cal in the business school and sign up for a liberal arts class which is in a building I never get to because it is at Vanderbilt in Nashville. The final is tomorrow. What to do? Wake up….
I, too, have had the same nightmare many times. I’ll have to try the “F” method.
I had a dream that I stopped going to my six-day-a-week German class because I didn’t like the instructor – plus the class was at 8am Monday through Saturday – and as a result I flunked out of college.
Oh wait. That wasn’t a dream. That really happened.
That was a recurrent dream of mine also for years, but once your conscious mind decides it doesn’t matter anymore and you can let it go, maybe your unconscious mind can follow suit. Where is Freud when you need him? An artist friend made a painting of her recurrent bad dream and she stopped having it too. The painting hung on her living room wall.