Seeing Clearly

I had a dream a few nights ago about my glasses. They were gone, or lost or something, but I realized in the dream that I’d had contacts in anyway. It seemed to be one of those situations (for anyone who’s worn contacts, you know that this is like) when your contacts have rolled somewhere in the back of your eyes. They’re in, they usually hurt a bit because they’re wandering around the back of your eyeball and they’re not in the right place. In my dream, my glasses were gone but the contacts rolled back in to make it possible for me to see. Things were cloudy, like they were old contacts, but I could see.

My interpretation is that I’m able to see at the moment, with or without glasses, maybe?

This reminds me of something from many years ago. There was a psychological test that was being done at my first university. Someone had folks estimate their performance on a simple task. I don’t remember what it was exactly, but let’s say it was how many times they could tap a button in a minute. There were two groups of people being tested; one was clinically depressed, the other considered themselves to be in good mental health. The first group was quite accurate judging their abilities, while the second consistently overestimated what they could actually do. The conclusion of this researcher had been to say that people suffering from depression saw themselves and their capacities more accurately, while those who thought themselves to be healthy think they are capable of more than they really are. In short, depressed folks see the world the way it is, while the rest live in a pink bubble.

I wonder if I can interpret my dream in this way; I have the means to see the world even without my glasses. And I don’t know what I believe, really, about dream interpretation. I always hated the idea of Jung’s archetypes. I might have learned about them incorrectly, since I’ve been corrected by people since then, but my initial understanding is that certain things mean the same thing for everyone, across societies. “Snakes = sex” that sort of thing. That just never made sense to me. If some guy was a zookeeper in the reptile house, or a boot maker, “Snakes = work”. Dogs can mean unconditional love or remembered trauma from being mauled years ago. People’s lives are too different for universal symbols to make any sense.

Anywho, after the dream, I felt happier the whole weekend than I’ve been in a while. I don’t write about the mild depression that I’ve been feeling here much, but I’ve been down more often than up lately. Most of the internet is people showing their best lives from the best angle; that’s just unhelpful and I don’t want to do that. I also don’t have what I’d consider to be a “real” depression. I’ve known people with that, and what I feel isn’t anywhere that serious. Also this blog being about sending happy vibes out into the world, I didn’t want to concentrate on my blues or whatever I have.

But I can see even without my glasses, according to my interpretation of my dream, and I felt happier afterwards. Somehow, I feel okay about the world, I guess, seeing it clearly. Maybe it’s my students, the lovely young teenagers at the school where I teach. I don’t think they’re angels, but their mostly just nice. Maybe it’s that I’m in less pain (been having foot/ankle problems). Maybe it’s the wonderful, sunny weather we’ve been having. Maybe it’s because there’s been some push back against the scary politics of the last year. Maybe it’s Foro because having a cute stuffed cow just makes my world better.

Sometimes when I’m feeling blue I don’t see Foro as clearly but he’s always there, always cute. Never underestimate cute. Maybe it’s just the cow making me happy.