The content analysis of my dreams

I dream a lot. The theme and content keep changing but I have been dreaming since I was a kid. I usually share my dreams with one of my family member or a friend the day after and then I forget. With three decades of dreaming experience concerning various topics I guess I am very well qualified to be a case study for some kind of “Dream Analysis” project! Well, till some one selects me for such research I thought I can explore the mysterious and fascinating world of my dreams and do a content analysis.

Dreams, they are unique as every individual is. It is said that every dream is connected with our personal life and experiences. It is also said that for the most part dreams are a reasonable simulation of waking life in terms of characters, social interactions, activities, and settings. I don’t think I can completely agree to that statement because my dreams are practically impossible in any real life.

When I was a kid I used to dream the whole Tom and Jerry show. Not the ones I watched but a whole new episode. I wish I jotted them down soon after I woke up, I could have sent the scripts to the directors! I used to dream of being a part of army or military personnel (influenced by a character in a TV series). I used to read science fiction by “Arthur C Clarke”. I dreamt of alien life in a very different way nothing as shown in movies. Recently I had a dream of a full length action movie shot in the streets of Paris featuring me in the lead role of course. How about that?

So what do they mean? What should I interpret from them? Some times I am aware that I am dreaming. When I wake up in between a dream, I go back to sleep and try to search for the part where it was paused and continue from there. This is scientifically possible and it is termed as “Lucid Dreaming” or “Dreaming consciousness”. But one thing I do not understand is how come I am having such heroic fantasies with my conscious mind! I think sub consciously I like experiencing such things but it is terrifying in real life and safe to explore in a dream state.

Recently my dreams have become more realistic. I did a considerable amount of gardening this summer and I had dreams of my garden in a house we lived when I was a kid. I also dreamt of signing books for my New York best seller! I wish it comes true. To dive into this analysis, I think I should have a journal to keep track of what I dream. If I am not able to conclude anything out of it, I can at least use them for my writing purposes. I am positive they make good stories.

I usually wish my friends on their birthdays “I wish all your dreams and aspirations may come true very soon”. But now, I don’t think I will say that any more. Some dreams are better off in sleep than in real life. I guess I will edit the line and remove the word “all” and make it “The dreams of your choice”!

The conscious, unconscious and the subconscious mind

To start with let me explain what made me write this post. I dream a lot. Sometimes I dream almost everyday and more than one dream in a single night! And these days I guess it is the dream season for me. I started thinking about why do we dream and do they mean anything?

My exploration on dreams lead me to Sigmund Freud's research, different states of sleep, and the various states of mind - the conscious, unconscious, and the subconscious mind. While I am still performing my analysis on these topics, I saw a movie today which dealt with schizophrenia. What are the odds?

I just realized that I deleted a chain email which said I will confront bad luck if I do not forward it to a 1000 people. All these incidents sounded a little scary as the movie was, so I thought let me finish writing this, delete the document from my hard disk and forget about these terms forever :)

Starting with the conscious mind, it is definitely not our true self. We consciously try not to hurt people or do something wrong even though in some situations we have a strong urge to do so. Sometimes or may be in many cases we do not express our true feelings to others either because we are scared of the consequences or are aware of the realistic world.

The term subconscious as it sounds is not a complete opposite of conscious. What ever we do in our subconscious state is what we would like to do. But this word is misused as they say that the person may not be guilty as he/she may have done something in their subconscious state.

We all have our own fantasies, insecurities, and lot of other stuff going on in our minds which we do not express always. But at times we open up, we loose patience leading a hypocritical life, may be just for a moment and I guess those are our subconscious deeds.

Coming to the unconscious mind, this is the complicated state of all. This is something which we are not aware of about ourselves. It is cultivated by our surroundings and our brought up.

My perception - sometimes when we strongly believe on doing something and all the facts and people around us support that decision, somewhere something in you says not to do it, an inner voice may be. That is the unconscious mind talking. The voice is a good one in certain people and not so good in others. One should see Ram Gopal Varma’s movies to get a better picture of the scary unconscious minds ;-)

This is my theory of the different states of mind. I have to relate this to my dreams and do a content analysis. Stay tuned for the report!

The view from my kitchen window

My kitchen window has a beautiful view. For a while now I have looked outside several times but hardly paid attention to the beauty of the scene lying ahead. My three year old started school this September. I struggle every morning preparing breakfast, packing lunch, getting him ready, and sending him to school all in 45 minutes time. I don’t have enough time to relish my morning coffee.

One morning, the last week of September I guess, I woke up thinking that it is another morning with the same routine. I wanted some fresh air and opened up the window. It was 8.00am. One look out of my window changed everything. The golden hue of the Sun peeking over the tree in my front yard on the wall next to the window was so beautiful. It was a calm and pleasant morning. A lush green lawn with the serenity of a landscape, the freshness in the air and the cold breeze awakened my spirits.

I lived in this house for almost two years now. But it felt like a new revelation to me. I made it a point to open the window first thing I entered the kitchen everyday. I never liked cooking and cleaning dishes. But now I don’t mind so much as I have some thing great to look at while doing so. The scene changes everyday with the changing seasons. Some times it is bright and sunny; some times it is foggy or cloudy.

Some changes are very gradual and yet other things happen in just a few days. With the approach of fall, I started looking every morning for the changing colors of leaves. The slow rustle of the fallen leaves with a cold breeze is marvelous. The morning’s delight, birds perching, squirrels going up and down the tree, it is a sheer joy to see.

As I see the leaves fall it felt so nice, a few yellow leaves here and there on the green lawn. But with in a couple of days the lawn gets filled with leaves, it looks so crowded. I thought that my mood swings the same way! Some time the days are just so pleasant and happy. But things around me, the happenings in my life, start bothering me and my mind becomes crowded like my lawn. But then my gardener came and cleaned up the rubble. Now I have a clean lawn again.

The lesson learnt is no matter how bad our minds get clogged with lots of things there will be some thing or some one like my gardener who will help clean it up and make it all nice and beautiful again. All said and done life is beautiful. We need to stop and look at it to enjoy its beauty!

Love at first sight

Do you believe in “Love at first sight”? Well, people who know me may say that how will I know? I had an arranged marriage and fell in love after I got engaged! I have not seen any of my friends who had “Love at first sight” either. But I do have friends who were in love at first and then got married. Some of them had loved some one and married a different person for various reasons.

Now, I can understand the feeling where you see some one, get attracted, make friendship, know them for a while and then decide to spend your life with them. But, love at first sight? I mean the meaning of love is different from what you feel by interacting or just seeing a person the very first time. My opinion is that crush or infatuation is often mistaken for love at first sight.

Come to think of it, people who claim to have had love at first sight are couples whose love succeeded. If it did not they would say it was just a crush and move on. But the truth is that the feeling when you see a person for the first time is a mere physical attraction, infatuation or some thing like that which blossoms into love as the relationship grows.

Love at first sight is like looking at an outfit in a store and feeling that it would look great on you. But it may actually look stunning on the mannequin and may not fit you. Assuming I fell in love with this dress and now that does not fit me, or may be it does not look as stunning on me as it looked on that skinny and tall Barbie doll mannequin. Now what? I get a little disappointed and take it out and leave it. I think it is the same with people too. We may think it is love at first sight but they might not be a perfect match.

My next question is if I had love at first sight should I do what ever it takes to have that person? Sounds reasonable, one should try to make their dreams come true. But what if the other person does not like me? Should I go the extent to shake his/her life to achieve my love? How does it work? I have seen several movies where the guy who is said to fall in love with a girl makes several attempts, gets beaten if necessary for the girl. OK, now the sympathy factor kicks in and the girl falls for this guy.

But you are what you are. Even if you change your attitude a little bit or to a great extent to get the girl or the guy, you get back to your self after some time. Then what? Incompatibility leads to misunderstandings, frustrations etc. So, I guess before diving into all this love mania one should practically think if the other person will suit him/her to have a peaceful life. Life goes on. It does not stop because you did not get the one you liked. You will eventually get some one to be with. Remember Yash Chopra’s movie “Dil Tho Pagal Hai” – Some one some where is made for you!

My first love letter!

I know most of my friends will be curious to read this one to know if it was actually to Rajesh (my husband). Well, sorry to disappoint you guys but it is not. If it was it would not have been a suspense thriller! This was in the year 1998. I was pursuing my masters at College of Engineering, Osmania University. The university organizes a cultural festival every year called “All-go-rhythms”.

This was the first time for me. I was all excited and went around with my friends participating in various competitions like collaging, crossword competition, whose line is it anyway, things like that. I was with two of my friends who stopped at a class room which had “Billet-Doux” on a board in front of it. They said lets go and participate. The competition already started so we had to enter the room and take our seats. I was not sure what it was about (I did not take French in school. “Billet-Doux” in French means love letter) but looking at others I figured out that it was some kind of writing competition.

I was interested in writing anyways, so took a seat with a sheet of white paper in front of me. One of the organizers read the instructions, two of them to be precise. “Write a love letter”, “You have 1 hour time”. That’s it. I was shocked. My friends chuckled and started writing immediately. I did not know what to do. Reason, I never believed in love. I never encouraged love affairs in my life. By then I already counseled a few people on why they should never get involved with a guy or a girl. I saw very few romantic movies but as a critic. I always made fun of the lovers and the whole concept of romance in the movies.

Clock was ticking and I tried to look at the participants in the room. I was the only one who was not writing anything. After 30 minutes, my paper was still blank as I was absolutely clueless. My friends were all smiles, giggling, blushing as they were writing and asking for additional sheets. I was embarrassed. I always have an answer for every question and I felt ashamed for not being able to put a single line on the paper. So I wrote.

I remember that I have written some thing very philosophical. Well, I could have imagined that if I have a boy friend what would I say to him but I was too dumb in that one area. Usually people do not forget the first things in life. And this was my first love letter to an organizer of the competition may be but what ever it is, the first love letter I ever wrote. I do not remember the contents. I wish I met the guy who read it and asked his opinion!

Why do people write blogs?

People write for different reasons. For some it may be like talking to a person, a friend, venting out all their thoughts and feelings. Some may have interesting ideas and would like to share it with others. Some may do it to start a conversation. Trying to get some comments on their work and discuss about it. Blogging has become a trend these days.

For me, it is different. I am not working right now and I was thinking of changing my profession. I always wanted to write but never tried it out. I was thinking of writing some articles and sending them to some editors. But one fine day, I got in touch with an old friend of mine and she suggested blogging when we were discussing on how to dive into the writing profession. That’s how I started my blog.

For me, it was not to convey my feelings. I was purely looking at my writing skills. The topics I chose were the ones I discussed with my friends over emails which got good responses. So I published them. I am not here to entertain or enlighten anyone with my writings. It is my medium to reach out to people and get some help to go forward as far as writing goes.

For some, they don’t care whether people read them or not. I do. The thought that my blogs are open to public forces me to write well. I think clearly when I write a blog. I get lot of insight when I sit to write. A bonus point is that jotting down my thoughts and feelings makes me understand them better.

I am aware that not all people think like me. But I am sure there are some who think like me and I am going to have an impact on them in some way or the other with my writings.

I am trying out different aspects of writing. I wanted to know if I have what it takes to write about some one else’s situation placing my self in their shoes. I wanted to write a very touching article. I tried “Can I handle the seasons of my life?” and I got a great response to it. Not as comments to the post but via personal emails. But that is fine. I succeeded in my attempt.

Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I was watching a movie and the title of this blog is from the lyrics of a song from that movie. Tears dropped from my eyes as I heard the song. Especially this line was very touching. Well, normally I would have appreciated the lyrics but since I am going through some ups and downs it felt miserable.

This was a few months ago. The moment I finished the movie I opened a word doc and gave it the title. Had I written this blog at that point of time it would have been a real tear jerker! Some thing came up and I did not get a chance to write it. I started thinking, will I be able to write it to the same extent after the moment has passed. I don’t think so.

Why is it that when we are happy we do not recall how bad our past was? And when we are sad all the past memories become fresh. It seems like I have been sad for long enough to remember the last best thing that happened in my life. And now I don’t even know if I am sad or happy. I guess the worst part of the day is when I am all by myself.

I tried doing some new things to keep myself busy but at least for a few minutes I try to think what I am doing with my life and it all comes back. Actually my life is not that bad. I had worst moments before and to my surprise I handled them well. But when ever some thing new comes up, it feel so hard, everything comes to a stand still, and questions my ability to handle the situation.

Can I handle the seasons of my life? I am good at handling the good ones like accomplishments (obviously). I am slowly mastering the bad ones but every other hit seems like a bigger one. I know there is much more to face in life and this is just the beginning. Some thing which has not happened yet should not hurt you but the thought that my today’s decisions are going to shape up my future is scary.