A few days ago I had a dream that left me wondering what the underlying message was. Dreams are such a product of a mishmash of subconscious scraps such that the resulting narrative is often bizarre and has no real moral. This would have been another one of those dreams, except that there seemed to be a fleshed out story. In the end it’s possible that there truly is nothing that my subconscious is trying to tell me, but it’s worth having a look anyway.

So, this dream takes place in the evening. The sun must have been low to the horizon because daylight was fading. The sun wasn’t really shining in my face though–it was likely hidden behind buildings. The sky was a dimming blue: twilight was upon us. I was walking along a road that didn’t have a sidewalk. There was a park to my left, and a row of average middle class houses to the right. I was with two of my friends and we were heading over to a subway station. What I was wearing stuck out to me because there are two distinct pieces that are in my daily rotation: the grey spring jacket with a bit of military detailing, and the black textured flat cap. You can see the look over in this older blog post. I think I wasn’t feeling too confident where we were walking, so I think I did my best to project a confident assertive walk. As I walked ahead, I passed an old brown Oldsmobile on the left parked on the side. As I did, this guy came and approached the three of us. He directed his gaze at me in particular though. He pulled out a knife with an 8 inch blade. I calmly ordered “step aside.” I assumed that he wanted me to walk over to the park area so he could mug me, or something. In a moment of stupidity, I refused and started to continue walking to the station. He took the knife and sliced my jacket right along the right sleeve from about mid-forearm to mid-bicep. The knife didn’t cut into me, but my shirt and jacket were sliced.

When that happened, I felt my body go into a bit of shock. Holy crap: my life was being threatened by some guy. I was frozen. Just then, one of my friends dove and shoved the guy away from me. He wrestled the guy and somehow managed to get him to drop the knife. The other friend body checked the mugger and the mugger fell to the ground. That’s when I snapped out of my stupor. I thought, “How dare this guy get my friends involved.” It was at that point I started pummelling the guy in the head. He was already on the ground and not in a position to fight back. That didn’t stop me from taking my anger out on him though. Soon he was entirely bloody and passed out on the concrete. Shocked at what the hell happened, I just sat next to him wondering what the hell to do next. There was a suggestion to just run, but I stood my ground. I ended up calling the police to come to the scene. In my mind I knew that I could plead self-defence since he was the one that got me with a knife first.

Now at this point the dream seemed to skip a big chunk of time. My next memory is of my being in a warmly lit hospital room. Usually hospital rooms have cold white fluorescent light, right? No, this room was decidedly warmer. I was sitting in a chair, still wearing my cut up shirt and jacket, looking at the mugger who was completely bandaged up and unconscious. I wasn’t looking at him with contempt but looking at him with concern. It was at this point that I woke up.

As I re-entered the waking world, my first thought was definitely, “what the hell was that about?” When I was up and mobile, I actually walked over to my grey jacket to make sure that it was still intact. Obviously, it was, but I just needed to be sure. The whole dream sequence left me a tiny bit shaken. Is that what it’s like to be threatened? Am I emotionally capable of beating someone up like that? It’s fascinating how the dream seemed to have a real message of compassion to it. Frankly, in the real world I don’t think I’d feel that much compassion for someone that would put me through such trouble. Maybe the dream is telling me that I would. Why would I have such a strong dream? Why now? What’s so special about this time? So many questions, but so many of them will have to remain unanswered.