December 6, 2004
Roy's dream Interpretation
After reading this dreams over a few times, I’d have to say this is a dream about transition and transcendence, about stepping into the next major part of your life. You could’ve probably figured that out for yourself. At first light, it’s pretty obvious why you had this dream. You’re at a stage in your life where you’re about to step into manhood, a time when you must traverse through the unknowns alone. Well, not utterly alone, but maybe you want it to be alone, and need it to be alone, or know that it will be alone. Being alone in the world can be a daunting thought, even for those who know that’s what ‘needs’ to happen.
The dream follows a linear path in a non-linear way. There’s the beginning, where you’re in present times in your old house, with hints of the soon coming future (the prospect of meeting girls/wife, Daniel Chun who has his future all planned out seemingly, and the symbols of travel which is just rampant in this dream), then there’s a mid stage, where you’re in London and Korea. There, you ponder both your future and past, and how it is going to affect your present future. Then there’s the end, which is your coping with the entire situation, where time is skewed altogether, and it justified everything else in the dream.
Alright, I’m actually having trouble organizing the interpretation of your dream. So I’m going to just start at the beginning, then group certain things as I see fit and jump around a lot. You probably know the basics of what this dream is about. I’m going to discuss all the details various elements I see as important, expand on the basics. Some of them might be stretched a bit, but you’ll see how well the stretched interpretation fits within the whole context of the dream. Dreams are incoherent at first glance, but you have to dig deep to find the proper fit. Once you understand what the incoherent images represent, the whole message of the dream becomes clear. I may not be right on with all of the interpretations of the dream, but I may be right about some of them, and with of those, you will be able to formulate your own interpretation.
The overall theme seems to be moving on with your life. Your recognition of being at your old house, and not wanting to leave it, your mom thinking you’re old, moving on the train, moving to different countries and thinking to yourself you’re still not there yet. We know what that’s all about. Now let’s talk specifics. The disparity between the east and west plays a role in this dream, as shown by the change in locales. First you’re in America, then London, then Korea, then America again. The past that you’ve been brought up in is a combination of the two. You’re a Korean brought up in American soil. As I will explain later, the existence of London in this dream might serve as neutral grounds for contemplation for the future. So there exists an… obligation perhaps, that you feel to the traditional family culture (Korean) and then also the freedom of the west, where people don’t seem to care as much, you have more freedom.
You have struggled with the two all your life. Your mom picking girlfriends for you might symbolize something you’ve had to deal with before. We’ve talked about this before. You feel obligated to be with a girl who meets the standard of your parents, similar background, etc… This whole theme of clashing cultures theme is something that’s deeper than I can just explain in a few simple words. And it goes far beyond just finding a proper girl to appease your parents. It’s something you’ve felt deep down without fully recognizing it consciously all the time. I believe this theme is the underlying current of the whole dream, it’s not the major thing that jumps out at you, but it’s just something that has remains in the back of your mind. It is the setting of which the main character revolves around, you.
Daniel Chun being in your dream is quite interesting. The thing is, I probably don’t know him as well as you do, so I can only go by what I’ve read about him in his Xanga and in the context of the dream. He seems to represent someone who has it all “made” in a sense. In some ways, he’s like the opposite of you. Not that I’m saying you’re a total mess, but within the context of the dream, it’s more like… he is the representation of the ideal. Whereas you feel uncertainty, he represents certainty. He seems to be a person who’s able to embrace freedom to a certain extent (the American), while maintaining a hold on his life without letting it get out of control (The Asian). He has his two sides under control. He also has his next ten years planned out, you probably saw that in his Xanga. You on the other hand, probably have a general idea of what your next ten years will be, but it’s all contingent on so many other things. You have the MCATS, the success of your websites, parents, and probably some other things that no one knows about.
There’s no uncertainty for him because his path is set. In the dream, he’s the ideal of someone who has it together. You want to know his secrets, but he isn’t able to tell you. In some sense, you know deep down inside that no matter how much other people try to teach you from their life experiences, in the end, you have to experience it for yourself. That’s why you weren’t given his screen name in the dream, and why you couldn’t find out more about how to set up your life exactly the way he’d done to achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve. Those are things you go through for yourself. A part of you want to just know the answers, another part of you knows the answers must be found on your own. The latter is your choice, because you don’t have a choice. The first scene sets you up for a search, starting with the search on the Internet, now begins your journey. This brings us to the next scene. This is like the path of the hero. You’re a hero Roy! Aren’t you excited?
Where do you look to find your answer? You look first to the future, the uncertain future. London. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to London. If you haven’t, it’s even more significant. Even if you have, it’s still a more foreign place to you than America and Korea. The hapless man is probably a representation of the uncertain you in the future. That’s why you sympathize with him when no one else would.
The whole dream plays on a sense of uncertainty. It’s an uncertainty about the past present and future, and the eastern and western cultures, and particularly when it comes to the future. You travel from home to London, then to Korea, then back to the States it seems, London and Korea being the midpoint between the three continents within the context of the dream. London is neutral in a sense. It is also where most of the action takes place and where you’re seemingly doing something for someone else by yourself. You alone sympathized with that man when no one else would. You alone saved that man from the river. You alone cared. If it weren’t for you and your umbrella, the passersby wouldn’t have even helped you help that man. They only helped because they saw that you helped first. But who were you really helping? You were helping yourself, since the man is a representation of your own uncertain future.
As for the kid at the subway station in Korea, there was a group already ready to help. The kid would be a representation of your past. Why is it that the kid gets the help, but the man doesn’t? You’re about to embark into man-hood; it’s a period of your life where you will probably not get much help. You’re on your own. Or, you want to be on your own. When you were a kid, everyone helped you. That’s why you sympathized with that man when no one else did, because you possibly saw yourself in the future. The more established people, like prince Charles, wasn’t going to help the old man. It’s the fear you have of moving on in life. But no matter how many times you get knocked down by cars, you’ll pick yourself right back up. This is because you know deep down that everything will be alright, because you will be there to help yourself, pull yourself out of any sort of trouble in the end. But that means letting go of the kid who always gets help. Again, the man was the future, and I believe the dream was showing you the worst-case scenario. Yet even in the worst case, you could handle it.
You felt happiness after both the child and old man got help. Now, you know that it’s inevitable that you will have to move on into the future. The thing is, the ending is the same for both the past and the future, happiness, satisfaction, knowing that you made it through alright. The two acts both contrast and parallel each other. In the end, you experience happiness because everything works out. As of right now, you are standing right between the child and old man. You’re about to cross the line from being that helpless child to becoming a man.
One small detail about what you used to save the man. It’s interesting that it was an umbrella that was used and not a stick or cane or something. An umbrella is used to shield oneself from the “rain”. Yet in this case, it is used to pull someone out of “water”. Water is an archetypical/universal symbol for life in most regards. An umbrella is used to cope with the rain. What do you do when the rain has turned into a flood and you are trapped in this flood? What happens when troubles or situations presented by “life” becomes too overwhelming? The dream is telling you that you have the necessary tool to “cope”. The fact that the umbrella materialized out of no where out of your need for it, shows that you have the “power”/”ability” within you to cope with the uncertain future. Once again, this is getting ever so repetitive, you’re there, the man who is the representation of the uncertain future of you is there, and he is rescued by yourself, by an umbrella you made appear like magic. With me here? I don’t really know how to explain that properly, but you get the point.
Train, let’s talk about the train. It is an outdated mode of transportation. It represents the past. And presently for you, it has become limiting because it can only travel on the tracks. It has set boundaries. Yet, you have pushed the limits of that boundary in the dream. You have pushed your past to its limits and forced the train to come off the tracks. By the time it comes, it’s too small for you. This means it can no longer contain you. You have outgrown it. Physically, you’re not supposed to ride the train anymore. Yet you ride it anyways. You’re pushing your present past for all its worth, or perhaps you feel that you’ve lingered at this present stage for too long, and need to be on your own. Still another part of you wanted to continue to ride the train. The reason you wrote down “No I have not arrived” is because your destination cannot be reached by train. The train, like the child, symbolizes the easier life. You’re automatically transported onto the train, and everyone you know is there. It’s the easier life, but it’s not the independent life.
Taxi is a mode of transportation in which your destination is revealed to the driver ahead of time, and he takes you there. You have to tell him your destination. And in your particular case, you traveled alone. This contrasts the train, and you can see how. Another thing is that you can be flexible with the taxi. Say if you wanted to go to my house, but decide you want to go to Sung’s midway through the ride, you could stop the driver and make that change. With the train, you can’t even get to exact locations of where you need to be. You just know you will be near your destination. The taxi represents you moving closer to total control of your own destiny. However, the thing that’s missing here is you driving your own car, which would represent ultimate freedom, to be able to go where you want and make whatever necessary changes as you see fit. If there were a scene 5 of the dream, you would probably be driving a car. The lingering of your family and friends also play a major part. You’ve left them behind, but you can’t truly “leave them behind”, they’ll always be on your mind. They’re your past, and have shaped who you are.
You don’t know whether your past has properly prepared you for the future that lies ahead, and you’re anxious to find out, fearful too perhaps, but in the end, you want to do it on your own, on your own terms. Otherwise, you would’ve gone to that party with your parents, you wouldn’t have left that annoying girl behind, and you wouldn’t have rode off in that taxi leaving everyone behind you. Another interesting thing was the “virtual friends” symbol. You’re at a transition period in your life, and that’s the basic premise of the dream. Past, present and future, and the decisions that goes along with it. Your moving on with your life means leaving things behind. Perhaps in a sense, a way to cope with leaving things behind is to pretend they are not real. Seeing how time really has no bearing in this dream, and that you keep jumping back and forth between the times. How in the present, you’re living in an old house, and how you see elements of the future in the past, and how you’re at Disney world, something associated with being a kid, and how in the end, you were no longer in a time period you knew. Interestingly, here you seem to be uncertain about your past too, you having second thoughts about your parents and your own upbringing, etc…
More on the friends thing, it may even be that you’re worried that by you leaving school in real life, that you’re apt to losing certain friends. This is the ultimate test of friendship I supposed, to see which will remain your friends, knowing not all of your friends will remain friends for life. You said that at the end of the dream, you were no longer surrounded by your family and friends, yet you missed them and felt depressed. That’s why you felt depressed in the dream, disappointed in finding out that your friends were not real friends. This journey you’re about to go on will not only separate you from those you know and love, but also test friendships and relationships.
The thing about you whining may be a compensation for the fact that you don’t whine very much, and that you need more an outlet in real life. Often times, such exaggerations in dreams are either an overcompensation, or undercompensation for what you do in real life. And I don’t know you to be a person who whines, so it must be overcompensation.
A side note about the whole friend thing: I don’t actually know exactly how you feel about friendships and relationships. I’ve known you for a while, and consider you one of my best friends, and know that your view on such things is really different than most people’s. I think we might actually have similar view on friends. As for relationships in general, I’m not sure. That’s why I don’t want to delve too deep into my own interpretation about this part of the dream, so I leave that part for you to interpret.
Remember in Donnie Darko, the old woman said to Donnie, “In the end, we all die alone”. Well, in a lot of the books on symbolisms I’ve read, death doesn’t only mean the end, it also represent rebirth. You must first submit yourself completely in order to move to the next stage in life. That’s the essence of death. A part of you must die to attain the next level. I think that’s what the ending of the dream represents. You felt that everyone else you knew wasn’t real. If you look at life in terms of death, everything in life becomes transitory and fictitious. It is necessary that you travel the path alone. This is a reoccurring theme in hero myths. Remember “ I can only show you the door…” That is why you were alone at the end. You have to go through it alone, you have to experience it alone. That’s why everyone else seemed dead to you. They had to be dead symbolically for you to move on. It could’ve just as easily been you who died in the dream. Upcoming events in life are going to be a major change for you, and you will be sad about this symbolic death, this letting go. But you know the inevitability of the situation, and it is what must happen. This symbolic death ushers in something new, a rebirth into the future. You want to find freedom from your own pattern of existence. This future is a long journey, and you have to take the first steps alone.
Posted by yuhoo7 at 07:06 PM.
3 dared say
Linked Entries
These are Tabulas entries which have linked to this particular entry.