Hi everyone! I just wrote a guest post for my friend, Catherine, from Never Stationary, called “Down the Rabbit Hole”. You can read the original here. I will post a copy on my site below. If you like it, please follow my blog on the right side of the page or like the post!
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“You’re incredibly bonkers. But let me tell you something: all the best people are.”
The one thing that you should never try to argue with is the fact that you are crazy. As in crazy, it could mean a flaw: you’re too spoiled, too artistic, too emo, too smart. Yet, it could mean a perfection: too spoiled, too artistic, too emo, too smart. Perfection is also never defined because we’re all perfect, and in perfect, I am referring to the flaws that make us who we are.
We look at flaws as characteristics that make us ugly, less appealing to the eye. And that’s why we dream, because we all want what we can’t have. If you were Alice, a young girl who was expected to be sophisticated and proper, you would want to run around chasing mad hatters and white rabbits. If you were being chastised by the exploration of Wonderland, you’d want to crawl back up that hole and go back to reading classical literature with your private teacher. It’s about what we don’t have, and we want all of that.
Like I said, it’s the reason why we dream. Constantly. We sit in math class, wishing we were somewhere else where we would be running through District 12 with Gale or swimming underwater with Marlin to find Nemo. Next thing you know, you’re shaking your head as your teacher is asking you a question that you have no idea what the answer is. Then, you’re in trouble because you’re now screwed for the test and don’t know how to study for it.
The ironic part is that not only do we have no idea what is going on in reality, but we also have no memory of what happened in our dreams. Salvador Dali had the extravagant idea of making dream journals, recording his dreams right after he woke up in the morning, and then made a story out of them. Here is one of his works.
As you can see, they made no sense and analyzing dreams were difficult. Freud also said that if we analyzed dreams, it would reveal our deepest and darkest desires, but how can you interpret something that you probably can’t remember correctly?
After thinking about this for a while, I’ve separated dreams into three categories: pleasant, nightmares, or nonsensical. Pleasant is when we dream about ourselves without the flaws that we see in ourselves or we have the things that we can’t have: we’re on the beach instead of the city or we’re runway models who work for Victoria Secret. Nightmares are the exact opposites, when we can’t escape from our flaws. And, nonsensical could mean a blur of meaningless colors or complete blackness, in which we don’t dream.
Now that I’m older, I don’t dream anymore. I haven’t fallen down the rabbit hole in a very long time, because when I do dream, my dreams seem like reality. Ursula is no longer in my house, locking my mother in the garage. Yes, I remember that dream and I remember the strangest parts of my childhood, including a giant, animated octopus walking around my house. But when I tell people that I don’t dream anymore, they automatically feel sorry for me.
I don’t think not dreaming is necessarily bad, to be honest. The rabbit hole and Neverland are meant for us when we were a certain age, the age of innocence and excitement. Because of that, our imaginations could run in little circles to wild places that we would never be able to even think of now. Things that never made sense and will never make sense. Yet, that’s what makes the rabbit hole so special: we can fall down the hole tonight or two years ago, but we can never fall down it too many times.
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