When I reflect on the year 2020, one of my first thoughts goes to a dream that I had near the beginning of the year. I had just come back from seeing my family for the holidays and ended up getting sick. That was back before COVID was a thing anywhere other than perhaps Wuhan and being sick was just...being sick. The flu, or whatever.
I had a couple really vivid fever-dreams during the first weeks in January, and this was something I posted on my Facebook account on January 6, 2020:
So, true story. I had a hard time sleeping last night, due to the crud I’m battling, and at some point, I watched an episode of Lost in Space, which my family and I started watching over break and I got hooked on. Penultimate episode of season one, I think. I watched the episode and then was tired enough to sleep. All was normal.
Until the dream.
I’m still in my room, in my bed, but some great catastrophe has just hit the planet (whatever planet I’m on in the dream), and I’m awakened not by anyone else but by (I swear) a clone of myself. There is an orange light outside and smoke in the air. And then the two Janas proceed to have a conversation.
J#1: Where am I? What’s going on?
J#2: It’s an emergency. An asteroid has hit the planet and we’re going to die if we don’t convert your bedroom into a spaceship and fly away.
J#1: ...whaaaat? My head hurts, I have a fever, and I’m so tired. Can’t someone else do it?
J#2: No, you’re not listening. WE ARE GOING TO DIE. UNLESS WE FLY AWAY. RIGHT NOW.
J#1: But I’m not a physicist. I’m not an engineer. I’m not any kind of a scientist. I studied literature and I kind of have a knack for computers. I don’t have the first clue how to convert my bedroom into a spaceship. You need to call someone else. RIGHT NOW.
J#2: There are no phones. No radios. No scientists are coming to help you. Somewhere in this house, there’s duct tape and a wrench, and you’d better get to it.
J#1 [really panicking at this point]: You’re not listening! I have a fever! My head hurts and I just want to sleep. I’m not a physicist! I don’t have the tools to get us off this planet! I’m going back to sleep and if I’m still here in the morning, I guess it’ll mean you’re wrong.
J#2: I’m never wrong.
J#1: zzzzzzzzzzzz......
I have thought about this dream a lot this past year because it felt (in retrospect) like a prelude to what was to come.
Perhaps the details were different--perhaps I was concerned about duct tape rather than toilet paper shortages--but the whole "we need to get off this planet" motif? Not the worst idea ever.
Do you ever wonder whether your dreams are more than just the product of spicy food or watching too much Netflix before bed? I do, sometimes. What if our dreams really do point us in the direction of something true, something hiding beneath the surface of our subconscious that we have discovered about the universe?
If we really believed that our dreams carried this level of significance, how would we respond to them?
