I woke up today feeling fresh and recharged and ready to take on the world- which I will, in a short while, but I want to get my daily writing out of the way and I have a pre-written subject to write about- which is the recurring dream I sometimes have, and just had.

It’s not a completely specific dream- rather, it’s always the same (but different) kind of grotesque dystopian setting, generated from many different scenes from my past. I often find it impressive just how complex these amalgams are- far more interesting than anything I could consciously put together myself. Ask me to create a setting and it’ll probably be boring, mono-dimensional, uninspired. My subconscious creates far more interesting settings, full of variation and zest, usually in a darker sense.

Inevitably, I’ll see images from secondary school, from junior college and from National Service. It’s always a little dark. I remember once being in my army camp, only with the exception that we were on another planet, with another night sky. (I then punched one of my colleagues in the face for annoying me, which I subsequently felt terribly guilty about, because I’ve always been strongly against any sort of violence.)

In this dream, I remember having to meet the principal of my JC. Before that, I remember having a conversation- and maybe a coffee- with an older friend whom I’ve been meeting somewhat regularly as of late. I remember taking a weird sort of giant elevator that went forward, sideways, and to the other part of… school- at this point I was in a morphed version of Victoria School.

I remember having to drive around in a tonner (large military-grade truck) with, oddly, no gear stick  and no proper way of reversing. (To reverse the lorry, I had to play with some complicated circuitry on the dashboard that I didn’t understand. I felt like I ought to have been able to- another source of guilt.) I remember a huge crowd of JC students emerging from somewhere, and one of them was an Indian guy (who reminded me of one of my seniors from VS who I never got to know personally) who was upset with me- I have no idea why- and tried to climb into the lorry to beat me up. I drove off, which caused him to fall and get hurt. I didn’t stay to witness or help.

I always had some sort of mission, some sort of quest, some sort of deadline to be met- and I was always rushing, always apologizing, always trying to make ends meet, in a way. And always failing, and always feeling terrible.

I wonder what my mind is trying to tell me, what it’s putting together. Somehow, inevitably, a remarkable proportion of my dreams lead to me feeling guilty. By that I mean to say that I always feel troubled by the good I didn’t do, or the bad that I inadvertently allow to happen. It’s a recurring principle. It’s never shame- I never feel bad for who I am, which is good- but there’s almost always some guilt. I could have saved that one. I could have helped, I could have made a difference- but I did not.

Is it my dreams that make me feel guilty so often, or is it my subconscious guilt that leads to such dreams? They do feel like they’re beyond my control- I do not feel like I have much power over myself in such circumstances, I feel more like a spectator than a participant.

Does everybody else feel this way? I don’t think so- I think the guilt must be a symptom of an inflated sense of self, just like pride. I feel too good when things go right, and I feel too bad when things go wrong. But do things go right and wrong, or do we make things go right and wrong? I’ve increasingly been moving away from the idea of free will- so stems from brain-chemistry- yet we must still ultimately be responsible for our actions, even if we aren’t always in control.

It’s something to ruminate on, and something that’ll probably never be completely resolved. On a fun note, sometimes I think I’d like to see a therapist of some sort- not because I think that there’s anything wrong with me, but in the same sort of way you get a medical checkup every now and then. I suppose that’s what friends are for, and maybe beer! (With the friends.)

The whole deal isn’t as bad or dramatic as I make it seem (because just writing about it makes it seem like a problem or an issue, when it isn’t), it doesn’t happen that often, and when it does, I typically forget about it almost immediately unless I make a point to remember it- like now.

Still, it’s interesting to think about. Someday this may be useful. I think it will be. I do want to explore this some day, maybe through fiction.