Stillness 7-7: It seems the less I encounter friends in my everyday life, the more I encounter huge crowds of strangers in my dreams. Sometimes I meet them and sometimes we converse or go places together, but most pass on through the dream without much more than a friendly glance or wave.
Having traveled so much as a child, I realize the word “stranger” may not mean the same thing to me as it does to someone who grew up in one place. When I was young, most people I encountered were strangers. It was assumed they were also friends. Whether they were helping us find a destination, or playing with us in the hotel lobby, or serving us at a restaurant… strangers came and went. Children we met on the beach were always our friends, even if only for one long hot summer afternoon.
So who are these strangers and why do I dream of them? Are you dreaming of them too? Many psychologists, including Jung, would probably tell us they are aspects of our psyche. Perhaps they would tell us that we have an array of shadows in our unconscious that we’re not addressing, or exploring, or making friends with. Jung does not imply negativity about our shadow—he uses the word to describe our unconscious self. Do these strangers in our dreams make up a vast unconscious crowd that lives inside us and that we need to deal with or at least bring to consciousness?
Or has the isolation so many of us are experiencing—beyond anything that’s ever gone before—ignited buried memories of strangers, friends, shadows, and sunshine? Are the dreams emotional, lonely, or do they feel like warnings? Do they become bridges to understanding or enlightenment? Mine don’t. They are simply of strangers who I encounter, hundreds of them, coming through my dreams, and then moving on. Or I move on.
Maybe we don’t need to analyze this further just now. Maybe none of us needs to try to figure anything out at the moment. It’s summertime. It’s not a time to plan or anticipate or achieve a great insight–it’s a time to greet, to swim, to play in the sand, and to pass on.
One of my favorite films of all time is Jacques Tati’s Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. When I dream of so many strangers, I feel as though I am in Monsieur Hulot’s dreamy holiday at a seaside hotel, and all the characters are neither strangers nor friends but simply fellow-people, peopling my heart.