The night before last, I had a dream where I was at some sort of expo. There, I met up with people I didn’t recognize but were good friends of mine. We decided to enjoy a meal together, so we sat down at a large table with some food. The food went cold, because we were talking so much. And then, shenanigans ensued.
I was laughing really hard for a lot of the conversation. It felt like a genuine connection to some happy place inside me, and my laugh was making other people in the room laugh. I didn’t care; it felt nice.
I don’t remember what we were talking about, or joking about, that made me laugh so hard, but at one point, I was laughing so hard I was crying. The best type of laugh, in my opinion.
I woke up smiling and thought I needed to remember that dream. Inside, it felt good, and I fell back asleep pretty happy.
Looking up dream dictionaries, it reports that all may not be what it seems. Some sites explained that being happy and laughing in a dream could be compensating for experiencing sadness in my waking life. Other sites wrote about the laughter (especially hardy, deep laughter) as a sign of keeping emotions buried.
Normally, I wouldn’t have thought anything of those explanations too much, but a later dream I had the night before last involved a few friends from high school and me going out to dinner here in Christchurch. Oddly enough, the restaurant where we were dining had a view of the Port Hills, a large group of hills at the southern point of the city. The Port Hills is an extinct volcano, a few explosions and time itself having worn down its once rough edges, water from the Pacific Ocean filling its craters.
The dinner seemed nice enough. It was evening, and we were talking about God knows what. The houses on the Port Hills twinkled as their lights came on while the sky darkened.
Suddenly, there was a boom and light shaking. Out the window, we could see a huge plume of smoke rising from the base of the Port Hills. Oranges and yellows were reflecting in the house and building windows near the vent itself, and large rocks and small rocks alike were pelting the earth below. Another eruption and another one followed. It was mostly gray smoke, but there was lava or magma or something like that at the base.
People were talking in the restaurant, but no one was very panicked. There was talk about the houses near the eruption site, and also a lot of chatter about this being a new vent on what was thought to be an extinct volcano.
We calmly finished our dinner, paid the bill, and went to leave.
In the parking lot, ash was coming down and small rocks were bouncing on the pavement. I explained our place was further north (which it is) and we should be okay if we kept driving north. So we got in the car, and that’s where the dream ended.
I wasn’t panicked, or scared, or anything like that throughout the dream. My mood was very subdued.
Looking the symbolism of a volcanic eruption up, it came up with a lot of different things, but most tied back in to emotions and feeling out of control in my own life. That would be a major understatement in my life over the last several years, so it could very well tie into that.
There were other hypotheses: repressing anger; dealing with a challenging person who sows chaos; facing a crisis in my life; hiding my true feelings from others; remaining calm in the face of adversity; and warning about upcoming difficulties in my relationships. Those were a few of the things inferred through dreaming about an erupting volcano, through various sources.
It’s interesting that both dreams, despite being very different, have similar meanings: hiding my true feelings.
Sometimes, I wonder if I’m overanalyzing my dreams. We’ve been watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel the last few evenings, and perhaps that’s where the laughter part comes in. And the Whakaari / White Island volcanic eruption has been still cycling through the news media here lately, which might be why I dreamt of volcanoes. Maybe these have had an effect on my dreams, and maybe not.
Anyway, I’ll keep an eye on my dreams (if I remember them) over the next few days and see if there are any more connecting motifs. It will be interesting to see.
Beam Me Up, Scotty 