MEANING(LESS)

I have a lot of horrible dreams. In them, I’m often late for class but don’t know where my class is. I have a recurring nightmare where multiple layers of contacts lenses are stuck in my eyes, and I keep pulling them out only to find more and more and—it’s really gross. But the dreams that are the most disturbing to me are the ones when I behave badly. I am filled with rage and screaming at the people who I love the most in the world over something completely inconsequential. I can’t count the number of times I’ve woken up and thought, “Wow, Dream Allison is a BITCH.” This inevitably leads me to wonder, is awake Allison a bitch? Am I suppressing massive amounts of unchecked rage that will eventually burst out of me and destroy my life and relationships?  Am I not actually the rational, conflict-avoidant person I believe I am? Or do dreams not matter at all?

This brings me to my central question of today’s blog. How do we know what we should attach meaning to? There are plenty of people out there who think dreams are deeply revealing. They would see my pattern of being angry when I’m asleep as proof that I am holding onto resentment that is poisoning me from the inside. And look, maybe I am holding onto a bit of resentment toward a few people in my life. But honestly, who isn’t? The issue is whether dreams are actually important and revealing enough that they warrant an active change in my conscious life.

While there are plenty of people (and psychoanalysts) who would argue that dreams absolutely are meaningful enough to warrant change, I have decided that I am not one of those people. I simply don’t want to care what my dreams may or may not say about me. Instead of viewing REM as a therapy session, I view it as a grab bag of entertainment. I never know what’s going to be showing that night, but I bought tickets anyway. And this highlights the fact that meaning isn’t something that is necessarily intrinsic to the things in our life. It is something we decide to give--with or without realizing it. This also implies we can take meaning away from something if we want to. And I find both of these revelations to be pretty exciting.

Thinking about meaning in this way not only gives us more control over what we value in our own lives, but makes it easier to understand how other people navigate theirs. For example, I am not someone who believes in astrology—never have and probably never will. For a long time, it annoyed me that anyone believed in it. I couldn’t fathom how they could let this thing, that was, in my mind, clearly made up have such an impact on their world view and sense of self. (Can you tell I used to sit on the far end of the judgmental scale?) But now I see it differently. Some people have simply chosen to attach meaning to astrological signs in the same way billions of people have decided to attach meaning to organized religion. Maybe when we die we finally find out which one was actually “right” to care about, but without that clarity none of us have any idea if we are attaching meaning to the “right” things are not. So I think all that matters during this life is if meaning feels correctly assigned on an individual level.

Some people will argue life itself is meaningless and nothing actually matters. But I don’t see how that can be true if it feels like something matters to you. Instead of rejecting all meaning because it’s impossible to discern what actually “counts,” I feel more motivated to find meaning now that I think of it as a personal choice. We’ve already discovered I don’t find meaning in dreams or astrology, but what do I find meaningful in this bizzarro thing called life? In many ways, I am still figuring it out. But I think one through line for me is finding meaning in connection. I deeply care about my relationships to others both individually and more broadly as a member of society. I care about how my actions and work make other people feel. And I cherish the impact other people have on me.

To me, there is nothing more meaningful than letting someone know that they matter to you. I have decided to attach meaning to the act of showing up every day both for myself and the people I care about. That is my guiding light. That is what helps me navigate who I want to be and how I want to interact with the world. And this interpretation turns the ordinary interaction of a friend checking in on me into something as powerful as a tarot card or prayer might be to someone else.

I don’t find my dreams meaningful. But the same cannot be said for the people who populate them--even if I keep yelling at them when I’m asleep.

xoxo,

Allison