Vocation at its deepest level is, ‘This is something I can’t not do, for reasons I’m unable to explain to anyone else and don’t fully understand myself but that are nonetheless compelling.’
Parker Palmer
I woke with a start at 4am. I’d slept in; but the reason for the startling wake was not this.
I’d had another dream.
Deep, lost to it dream.
After regathering myself-what day is it, where am I, oh that was a dream….I remembered I asked for this.
Dreams for me, the ones that wake you, or return to you later in the day with vivid clarity, these dreams hold meaning that to me is a universe, God, soul, sending messages to put me back in line, or help me take that next step.
Seems rather grandiose as I type that, but nonetheless as best as those words can portray, this is how I feel. Not a puppetmaster pulling strings of my life kind of aligning me, but a ‘hey, over here! this is where you were headed, remember? this is a better next step, okay?’ kind of nudging…
I was holding a key in my hand. Clutching it with an anxiety of its loss. It was a car key; the kind with the fob inside, black and bulky compared to a standard front door key. I’d just come from a gathering of people splayed out on towels and mats in the sunshine all listening to someone speaking. My step granddaughter threw up over the shoulders of two lounging strangers into a waterway in which I began to walk. My sister and oldest niece followed along as if we had somewhere to go. We boogie boarded across an expanse of water all the while my anxiety of holding onto this key. On the other side I found us walking a sort of boardwalk in front of cottage front doors and this is where I woke.
The little I know of dream interpretation, and the various filters interpretations can come through, I feel as if this key has meaning, the water has meaning, maybe the vomit has meaning, and my sister and niece along has meaning. As for the anxiety, I can’t parse it out.
Well maybe I can. Maybe it’s the biggest, most obvious meaning-making motif.
I’ve read that the emotions in dreams hold the most key of value in interpretation. It feels as though this anxiety-which it’s worth noting has been woven through all my deep dreams for a few weeks now-is misrepresenting something. As if it’s a false fear, one manufactured to throw me off course. Yet I am not sure what the course is about and what being thrown off would look like. I’m talking in waking life here…
Creativity. That’s the core of my presence in life. First family, children, home. Now that they’re grown, art, atmosphere, places to gather, beauty, inspiration.
Where am I going with this…..
I think there are more dreams to be had. I think there is a deeply buried something rising from my depths coming in bits and bites to give me insight slowly. Kindly.
It may be difficult to digest so my psyche is sending it my way in small portions; nice of me…
But were I most honest, if I try to see into it before all the pieces are together, it is about my career. My art. My teaching. My showing up (or not). This is what I have been asking for. Word, guidance, direction, help, alliances, insights with which I can reenter, or not, the path of my career.
Parker Palmer calls it vocation. This is for sure the thing I can’t not do. To create place; to make beauty; to invite others in to inspire and uplift; to be able to share and ignite someone else’s spirit to live more deeply in their unique life. These things I seem to not not be able to do and they call to me constantly.
When I falter, when I grow suspect of my own worth and value in output and purpose, these times especially, I can see how I can be tripped up. That anxiety overriding my dream; there is something to it.
Yet I see also, I hold the key.
in love.
trish