I can't tell if my jokes are offensive. (dream)

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DREAM

I use ChatGPT to generate about 10 cute divisions for the day--like 10:45-11:30 a.m.: A Coffee Pause With My Friend's In-Laws. 

They all rhyme and everything, and I like them, but I dread using them tomorrow, because I think the couple I'm spending the day with will find them too clever. There's a time and a place for humor and light-heartedness, and I don't know if this is it. But I have no other ideas for how to segment the events of the next day, so I'll do it. 

The titles even discuss a medical problem one of them has, which, I fear, could be really too much. That would be an entire other layer of complexity to the humor. I fear that it could be too personal and too fitting for the people I'm spending time with.

INTERPRETATION

I look back on this dream and laugh, because I felt the most genuine terror at this dream. I was half awake feeling my heart pound for some of it. I think it was just fear at spending time with new people I didn't know very well, and fear about using humor. 

When humor goes well, it goes really well. People absolutely love it. But when it doesn't go over well, it can inspire tremendous offense. 

For better or worse, due to fear, I usually try to play it safe with people I don't know well. 

I am kidnapped and forced into service with the Russian Army. (dream)

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DREAM 

I'm the U.S., and I'm not living a successful, abundant life. I don't have a job, and I'm dissatisfied with my circumstances. 

Then, the place I'm in the middle of applying to for a job is bombed and I am kidnapped by Russian soldiers. They take me in a truck across the border.

I'm terrified, but all they do is assign me to work as a medic. 

I don't think I'm suited to that, but there's some security in having a stable role to perform. A piece of me is actually happy with this new situation. But this was still tasked to me under threat, and I'd be working for the "enemy," so I also feel very afraid and exploited still. 

They don't give me any instructions or monitor me, so I wander around looking for a way to escape. My mother shows up, and I try to explain to her that I've been kidnapped. They probably have my passport, and I need to get it back. But she doesn't see why I can't just cross back into the US with her. I am almost certain that the U.S. will not allow me back into the country without some kind of proof that I am a U.S. citizen. But I consider her idea. 

INTERPRETATION

I think I feel kind of bummed out about not having a regular social role. And I've considered doing a lot of things that aren't a "normal," stable job just to get some kind of success with something that takes me out of the house. I don't really want to try something really fringe and unusual, but I feel pushed into trying it sometimes (being forced into going over to the other side because there's nothing in my homeland). I don't really want something boring and conventional, but I often think it's an acceptable compromise (being a medic).

A snake and a pair of moles fighting for their place in the sky city. (dream)

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DREAM

The aesthetic is soft watercolors and sweetly drawn illustrations. 

A roly-poly mammal of some sort (my best guess is that he is a mole) is fleeing his encampment in the sky. He's been rejected by his peers and must live in solitude now. 

I am a snake. I join him. We're natural enemies, but we get along. 

I help him find the love of his life in a new town. One day, while all three of us are seated someplace comfortable together, I tell them, "All I wanted was for my parents to be intelligent. But seeing the two of you makes me realize intelligence isn't everything." I guess that's what they call a backhanded compliment! I was referencing how they're both quite bright, but they do fight. 

We decide to fly back to the encampment and fight the mole's enemies--mine too. I fight my enemy with my strange snake fisticuffs while they approach theirs. I finish and fly ahead to help defeat their upcoming enemy. I have seen the future and know I must do this. But they feel abandoned. 

We're all reunited when we fight the enemy roly-poly together, and all is forgiven. 

It's nice and peaceful and friendly in the encampment afterwards.

INTERPRETATION

I can definitely relate to having to fight to claim your right to exist in a certain space. I think that anytime there is drama within an organization, you have to make a decision: do I abandon this space and all the plans I had based around it, or do I fight to stay in it and live with the sadness that will come afterwards when I remember the battle? 

But this not something I've had to deal with for a while, fortunately, so it's strange to have a dream about it now. But then again, sometimes, I think you can't afford to think about trauma until things have calmed down quite a bit in your life. So as I consider reentering the conventional work force, perhaps I am considering these memories as well. 

My hip hop love story. (dream)

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DREAM

I'm young--maybe 18 or 19, and I am in a Borders Books store. I work here, but there's also a special event going on. A bunch of musical artists and producers and big names in the music industry are here. 

I bump into a young man my age who is an aspiring rapper. I'm an aspiring singer. He's kind of into me, and I think he's okay. We get together, and the best part of our relationship is making music--either together or separately. 

He becomes quite famous--much more so than me. I spend most of my time with our baby. 

I'm talking with my mother and I describe my relationship and how I'm spending most of my time going to church now. And if he wants me and the baby to disappear so he can explore his newfound success, we'll get out of his life, and I'll never see him again. I describe to my dad that he has a good heart, but he's very childish, or perhaps mostly just child-like. I have too much self-respect to be cheated on and taken for granted. I have no evidence that he's cheating on me, but the spark is gone, so I worry. And I've let myself go as time has gone on. 

I'm suddenly middle aged and heavy, but I love myself unconditionally and expect to be treated well. I am not attached to the outcome of this confrontation. 

I meet my husband again in a Safeway, and he's surprised I feel neglected and wants to continue the relationship. It looks like I was right about him having a good heart.

INTERPRETATION

I think I had this dream, which felt a lot like a genre, hip hop movie to me, because I keep seeing news clips talking about how there's new evidence in the Tupac Shakur case. 

I'm not exactly sure where all the determination to be treated well in a relationship comes from. Maybe it's my therapy rubbing off. I did see a former therapist flash across the dream screen. I knew that was the standard she'd hold her relationships to, and I knew that was what I needed to do as well.

Social anxiety about opening a tee store. (dream)

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I've been thinking about trying to sell cute and funny shirts through a company like Etsy, or Teespring. I wouldn't be using Zazzle again. They suddenly started charging a monthly fee to use them. But I think I'd be fine with Etsy or Teespring.

I dreamed that these two guys, who were a lot like Arin and Dan from the Game Grumps, were tasked by their manager to sell tees. It felt weird getting sold this stuff through people we're supposed to be listening to. People with a message. 

Then they went to speak to someone with a lot of political power, and it felt really silly for someone known for making silly tees and slogans to have such a big responsibility and voice for the people.

I guess these are some of the social anxieties I have just thinking about opening an online tee store. 

I win a statue of Buddha with a cobra. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

A group of old seafaring friends individually go to visit each other. They're all captains now, like in the original Star Trek. And those ships are usually in the middle of the ocean. The friends like to tease and prank each other. 

For example, I go with one lady, who gets the emergency procedures reviewed on an old friend's ship. She goes to see the captain, and jokes about how simple the procedures are, when they've actually been shipwrecked before and know how complicated it is to be in those emergencies. 

I'm new to all this, so I inquire about sharks. She says it's really important to stay out of the water and avoid them. I see myself on a scrap of wood avoiding the huge masses of white and gray flesh that keep popping up. 

"They can launch themselves onto the land, can't they?" I ask. I see a small great white launching itself onto a rocky beach where I think I'm finally safe. 

"Yes," she says.

Then I'm in a quaint, small town's shopping area with a friend of mine. We walk into a small, wooden store that sells crystals. A woman behind a counter presents us with a large case full of flat, polished stones the size of a person's palm. My friend does something very Dr. Strange-like, drawing lines in the air around the stones, and when he's done, the lady just gives him several of them. We haven't paid any money. 

I gasp and say, "This is extraordinary! How do you play this game?" 

I think it's a game anyway. That's what it looks like to me. My friend confirms it when he says, "You use your cell phone."

I look up the game right away. You have to move two slow frogs around a room, collecting things to use as currency with the physical shop owner who is giving away stones. But the whole time, a bear chases the frogs. I start losing right away. 

I don't think I'll ever win as much stuff as my friend, but I do win a stone statue of Buddha with a cobra because I guessed a phrase to go with it: "Man cannot live on faith alone." I know it's not the traditional Christian phrase. In fact, it's probably the opposite sentiment of the phrase, which is that you can't live on food alone--you need spiritual nourishment. So I look for the reaction of another friend who I know is a Christian.

INTERPRETATION

I had a dream right after this one that involved taking friends in to see an abandoned house, so I feel as though getting into trouble and having fun misadventures with reliable friends is a theme for the night. In the dreams, I'm never really in trouble with friends around, even though I'm in some suspenseful situations. And I do feel very safe and secure with my current real life friendships. 

But it's the Buddha with a cobra that really has me intrigued. "Naja" is part of the scientific name of the cobra family. And I have been trying to immerse myself in a Buddhist practice in the past year. (From what I've read, Buddhism really likes to define itself as something you do and experience versus something you believe in or study.)

Buddhism has been a curiosity of mine ever since I started taking praying mantis kung fu lessons way back in my very early 20s, but I'm looking for something more now, spiritually. My intensified and renewed interest began because I was experiencing a lot of stress and looking for peace, but now that things have calmed down again, I still want to explore what Buddhism has to say more generally. I do have a lot of Christian friends and family, so I feel a little restrained when it comes to the topic of religion. I tread carefully (in the dream, I very carefully observe my Christian friend's reaction). I think some of them don't know what I mean by "Buddhism" (which is fair), and they are scared about my leaving Christianity.

It's interesting that the catch phrase in the dream is "Man cannot live on faith alone." I believe that the  dream expresses my fear that I'm sitting around reading and meditating too much. Too many autumn walks, crunching around in the dried pine needles. It's very pleasant, but feels strange at the same time. I'm not used to having so much calm in my life. 

I guess my concern isn't so much that I have so much calm; it's more so that I'm not serving somehow, which is what I would like to do.