All Men are Great in Their Dreams...
…except for me.Last night I experienced a variation on a recurring dream. I am often visited by this nocturnal vision where I am backstage at a theater, waiting in the wings and preparing to go on and deliver my lines in a play.
Only problem: I have no idea what the play is!
I run around fiendishly backstage, (all the while trying not to attract attention from the stage manager and other actors), searching for a script so as to figure out who I am, who all these other people are, and what my lines are and to try to hastily commit them to memory so as not to embarrass myself in front of an audience.
I’m pretty sure this terrifying dream is about measuring up to expectations-my own, others’- and the fear of failure, the fear of “being found wanting.”
In last night’s variation, it wasn’t just a play. It was a musical!
My subconscious has now gone one demented step further. I now have to sing a song I’ve never heard in a musical I’ve never seen.
posted by Mike @ 9:46 AM
4 Comments:
I really really do hate dreams like that!
Perhaps this is based on anxiety of running your first half marathon on a very public stage. Running with 18,000 other runners last year for the first time wasn't necessarily nerve racking, but it had an element that gave me butterflies. I may be way off, but that is my diagnosis.
Dr. Charlie-
I believe that you are at least partially correct in your diagnosis. The 1/2 and full marathons coming up in the future, not to mention the 33 mi bike ride this Saturday...these are all big deals for me, both physically and emotionally.
I've got a lot riding on this "new person" thing! But, like I said, this type of dream has also been a recurring one for years. Ultimately this is my subconscious reminding me that at least some part of me CARES how I am perceived by others.
Part of my gray matter is always pursuing approval, whether I want to admit it or not.
I have had a similar dream where I am a piano player in an orchestra, and I'm not much of a pianist. I just sit there waiting and waiting.....
Your cracked me up! You need to write the song you were supposed to know...
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