The glittering ballerina, floating in space. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I enter a large university, and see a friend from a job I had a long, long time ago at the front desk. My tongue swells to the point that I'm constantly chewing the sides of it. I try to stop, but I can't. 

My friend is overflowing with excitement and enthusiasm, and she convinces me to take ballet, because I've always wanted to. She says I won't live forever. 

She drives me to class in an open jeep as the building is falling apart around us in huge, concrete chunks. The sky is space, and I see a large projection of a glittering, pink ballerina floating in front of me. 

I really get the sense that life is short, and I am glad I'm living it to the fullest while I can.

INTERPRETATION

There's a part of this dream that's straight-forward, and a part that I'm not so sure about. 

I've wanted to take adult ballet classes for many years now, but I'm intimidated because of my weight and age. After this dream, I'm starting to wonder if I'm really going to regret not doing it!

I think the crumbling building symbolizes how we're coming a little bit closer to death every day.

But the swollen tongue I kept chewing on is strange. I woke up and did not have a problem with my tongue. Once we rule out a literal, physical problem intruding on the dream, I think the interpretation that leaps to mind first is that words are being held back. But in the dream, I didn't feel an urgency about saying anything. 

Maybe the tongue is more a symbol of a health scare, and doing what you can in spite of failing health. That fits in better with the themes of life being short, and the crumbling building. 

For me, one of the strange things about getting older and realizing that some of my parts are starting to wear down is the increased sense of peace and gratitude I feel, generally-speaking. Maybe it's because I've learned to manage my mind and body better with time. Maybe it's because I have the comfort of stable relationships I can rely on. Maybe it's because I have enough statistical information to realize things usually work out fine. Or maybe it's because I realize things are coming to a close, and there were, and will always be, a lot of very simple, ordinary, nice things about the experience of living to focus on. Maybe it's all of those things. But in the dream, I felt that same kind of peace and excitement--amplified, in spite of the building collapsing.