Strange dreams
So I've been sleeping poorly lately; not always with the bad dreams, but a lot of restlessness and very light sleep where I wake up a dozen times, toss and turn, and such.
When I have bad reams they're usually not nightmares; they're just distressful. Like this morning, I woke up having remembered a large chunk of this relatively coherent dream sequence. I was chaperoning my young niece, Sierra, in a school event. She was given an assignment to create some sort of banner (similar to a project that Learsfool is working on, which may be what put it in my head).
Anyhow she made the banner, which looked like a draped coat of arms, such as would go on a castle wall, but the teacher did or said something mean, and required some kind of addition. Somehow in this we got the impression that the school was crumbling, and no one wanted to admit the fact. So the addition was a sort of call-to-arms to wake up and see the cracks in the foundation.
The mean teacher got wind of it and refused to accept it. The only way Sierra could turn in her project was to strip it of its truth and leave behind only the decoration. I can remember having a confrontation with the intractable teacher on this, and then having to explain to my upset niece that she had to choose between pleasing her immediate authority figure and thus progressing through the system, or pleasing her sense of principle while the system punishes her.
I don’t recall what choice she made. But I remember being really angry that she was being forced to choose, and I remember her gloomy understanding that it was the sort of choice she’d have to make a lot as she grew up.
There was something desperate and sad about it, and I felt helpless and frustrated.
The worst part was the certain knowledge that neither choice would give the satisfaction of vindication. When you feel as though you are wronged, you want acknowledgement of the fact. Win or loose, you want the object of your indignation to admit that the offense is real, and justified. It’s a hard pill to swallow to know that life can be terribly unfair. It’s worse when life refuses to acknowledge that it’s acting unfairly, and makes you feel as though you are the unreasonable one. Perhaps it is the expectation of fairness itself that is unreasonable, but there’s no comfort in that either.
Not a fun dream.
When I have bad reams they're usually not nightmares; they're just distressful. Like this morning, I woke up having remembered a large chunk of this relatively coherent dream sequence. I was chaperoning my young niece, Sierra, in a school event. She was given an assignment to create some sort of banner (similar to a project that Learsfool is working on, which may be what put it in my head).
Anyhow she made the banner, which looked like a draped coat of arms, such as would go on a castle wall, but the teacher did or said something mean, and required some kind of addition. Somehow in this we got the impression that the school was crumbling, and no one wanted to admit the fact. So the addition was a sort of call-to-arms to wake up and see the cracks in the foundation.
The mean teacher got wind of it and refused to accept it. The only way Sierra could turn in her project was to strip it of its truth and leave behind only the decoration. I can remember having a confrontation with the intractable teacher on this, and then having to explain to my upset niece that she had to choose between pleasing her immediate authority figure and thus progressing through the system, or pleasing her sense of principle while the system punishes her.
I don’t recall what choice she made. But I remember being really angry that she was being forced to choose, and I remember her gloomy understanding that it was the sort of choice she’d have to make a lot as she grew up.
There was something desperate and sad about it, and I felt helpless and frustrated.
The worst part was the certain knowledge that neither choice would give the satisfaction of vindication. When you feel as though you are wronged, you want acknowledgement of the fact. Win or loose, you want the object of your indignation to admit that the offense is real, and justified. It’s a hard pill to swallow to know that life can be terribly unfair. It’s worse when life refuses to acknowledge that it’s acting unfairly, and makes you feel as though you are the unreasonable one. Perhaps it is the expectation of fairness itself that is unreasonable, but there’s no comfort in that either.
Not a fun dream.