The Dream

I have a recurrent dream that I have had for much of my adult life. I think there are significant dreams and there are idle dreams that one can simply enjoy and ignore. The recurrent dream of mine is that I am in an urban crowd of people and am in my underwear shorts, trying to find my clothing. The people observe me but make no comment. I do not recognize any of the people in my dream. They are generic. I feel exposed and embarrassed and have a sense of urgency to get dressed. The dream is accompanied by some anxiety that I will not find my clothes.In the dream of course, there is no resolution because the resolution to the awkward dream comes from the outside, not within the dream. As a result, I never find my clothes and the dream fades. Clothing can be both a cloak and a statement. How much of each, the individual will come to decide! One's inner man and one's outer man are hand in hand. Leonard's song about My Secret Life is a touchstone. You can fool most of the people most of the time, but you cannot fool the inner man. I don't pretend to be much of an expert of Jungian ideas but he was always clear that aside from the principles of interpretation, the ultimate testing came from the individual whose dream experience it was. I think,in my case, that you could take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy!