A Dream About Responsibility That Initially Seemed Mundane But Now Seems Profound
I had an interesting dream a few days ago. In the dream, I was gathered with a bunch of people near a beach. We had a large tent set up. A number of people in our group started walking down the beach to go do something, and I realized that everyone had left the tent behind. The tent had a lot of expensive electronics in it, including an ipad, and several laptops and smartphones and other expensive devices, all sitting out in the open. I had the thought that if I left the tent alone, there was a risk that someone could come by and steal the electronics.
I tried to yell after the people walking down the beach and bring this to their attention, and asked them if they needed or wanted me to watch the electronics, but I wasn't able to get anyone's attention, and I was left standing around.
I decided that I wanted to watch the tent because the risk of someone stealing the electronics was too high and I would rather stay behind for an unspecified amount of time, than risk that. I remember feeling slightly annoyed, but once I made the decision to stay I felt content with it, and I started working on other things, and then later I talked to other people who came by and the dream went on. I don't remember much else from the dream.
I initially thought this was just another dream, and I didn't think it was particularly deep, but I was talking to sylviagrace about it, and she pointed out that she thought the dream was about the concept of responsibility. I've been thinking about and talking about responsibility a lot, in the context of discussions in Why This Way. There's a wiki page on responsibility that covers some of the results of these discussions.
It now seems obvious to me that this dream is about the notion of taking responsibility for something when you end up being the only person able to do something...like when the situation or circumstances set it up this way, or when the negligence of other people leave you so that you are the only person in a position to make a choice (or the only person who actually chooses to make that choice). For example, it seems a lot analogous to there being litter on a street which no one picks up, or the situations where someone seems like they could be injured, and either people are walking by, ignoring them, or maybe you are the only person who sees them.
Anyway, that is what I was thinking about, and the dream seemed a lot deeper when I thought about it in this respect. I also was thinking about an analogy between the electronics, and human life. I don't really place a great deal of importance on electronics, but they do represent an item with a high cash value that is easily stolen. But I think analagous situations, like the example of the injured person I gave above, occur with human life--which is something I consider much more valuable, in a categorical sense, than electronics. When I think about the dream in this context, I find it really thought-provoking.