Short Story: John's dream is interpreted by his psychologist

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John Jovinal, was a non-smoker. He had always been a non-smoker. His parents, brothers, and sisters, were all non-smokers. There was, of course, the odd smoker in some branches of his family tree, but most of his relatives were non-smokers too. John was upset then, when he had a dream, where he was in a contest to decide the best person to be able to roll tobacco into a cigarette paper, with others competing too. He did not smoke in the dream, but still, why would he even enter a contest like that, in a dream? What did this dream mean to him? John asked his psychologist about this dream, and here is what Antonella, his psychologist, said to him: "This dream shows you that life does not always come to you how you want it to come, but must be more often be met on its merits, never-the-less though, you did not have to compete in that contest, but your mind is curious, and as you were not actually smoking, it indulged itself in the dream, something that you should be wary of in real life too." "Do not just walk the letter of the law, stay away from self-indulgence, on the edge of that law too." "Keep the spirit of the law alive in you, and do not mine for gold around its edges, in its cesspit of the letters of the law only." "You tend to want to rebel against law altogether though, and live on the fringes of what you can get away with, as you do not like being so restricted by society, clipping your wings like that too." "And so, in this dream, you rebel against your own inner law, as enforced by yourself, and your parents not to smoke, or have anything to do with the paraphernalia of smoking either." "Oh," said John. "I see. Perhaps, as a competitive person, though, I just wanted to compete in that contest." "No," said his psychologist. "We never compete in dreams. Dreams are not something we do, but something we are in, as a spectator." "Competition is there, but we are not deciding to compete, or not." "Rubbish!" said John. "Competition, in a dream, is telling us to look at our emotions, as we have locked them up in some area of our life, and competition usually can free them up." The psychologist smiled: "Well, you are the best one to interpret your own dream, so perhaps you are right. I was just trying my best to help you there too." "Well, we have come to the end of this session." "I wonder what you will dream about before next week's session" And so, John paid her her fee, and drove himself home, still thinking about why he had overreacted against the interpretation of his dream, by his psychologist, and getting rather heated, and upset, by what she had said to him there. Afterword: Dreams always bring us food for thought. We should look at them from all angles, not from just our own ideas alone. When we have a lot of ideas on the table, then we are better placed to decide the best meaning for ourselves then. It is still our decision, but we can make it from higher awareness, when we open ourselves to greater interpretative ideas, than just to our own. Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com John was rolling cigarettes in his dream.