Examples
of LifeDreams
The Car
After college I went into the military.
I was in the service for about 5 years and during that time I had bought
3 new cars. Each of them was perfect. I never had any trouble with them.
At
this time in my life, I wasn't rich but I had a decent paycheck coming
in every month. And even though the cockpit job itself could be dangerous
every now and then, there was a measure of a sense of security since the
service tends to take care of many basic issues, such as healthcare, for
its members.
Then I got out of the military and began a career in advertising design,
my degree specialty. Soon after, I bought a 4th new car. This car soon
developed an annoying backfire, usually when on the Houston freeway system,
and it never really ran right, even though it was Car and Driver's Car
of the Year...an Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I made some modifications
to the carburetion system which helped a little, but the car simply wouldn't
run, as designed and built.
At
this time, I was having to start fresh in a career that I had a degree
in, but no experience. Thus I had to accept some very low paying jobs
at small ad agencies for a few years, just to make ends meet. I'd work
a while at one, try my hand at freelancing, work at another one for a
while...gaining experience all the time but little to put in the bank.
A few years later I bought another new car. It also was a Car of the Year.
About 6 months later it developed an awful habit of just "quitting"....usually
on the middle lane of a Houston freeway. After dealing with this for about
a year the manufacturer issued a recall the ignition system was faulty.
I
sold the car soon after getting it fixed and bought another new car.
When
this occurred I had taken a regular job as first, designer, and then later,
Executive Art Director, at a larger ad agency. The money was nothing to
write home about but it was steady. And so was the workload. I was often
working nights and weekends to just keep up. After a few years of this
I wanted "out". I wanted to be an artist or an illustrator and
actually make pretty pictures instead of using my design skills for selling
other people's products. So my consciousness became more and more degraded
that last year and finally resulted in my resigning the job and moving
from Houston to a secluded, lake cabin in Louisiana where I did nothing
but draw, paint, fish and canoe for about a year...in a concentrated effort
to master pastel, acrylic and oil painting.
And the car I bought about a year before I quite the job in Houston was
a sports car. Sports cars represent freedom and the convertible top represents
dual purpose. After I had driven it for about a year the engine began
to die suddenly...just as my previous car had. I soon found out that the
ignition system, as well as the entire charging and starting circuit had
been a flawed design.
My
time at the lake was fine except that I was anxious to get on with my
artist career, anxious to start making a living painting and anxious to
move to Austin where the bluegreen waters of Lake Travis beckoned me.
So I was "free" of the corporate job but the "security"
aspect of getting paid regularly was still hit or miss. The little red
car was a perfect symbol for this time period in my life.
After my next new car, which was okay except for a weak clutch design
that caused it to go out in about a year, I bought a new 4x4 import truck.
By this time I was beginning to get wise to some of the metaphoric symbols
of my dreams and began to suspect that something "else" was
operating in my life that symbolically tracked with the events of it.
I was beginning to recognize how LifeDreams work. At any rate, this truck
ran perfectly for several years until I sold it later simply because it
wasn't powerful enough to pull a heavy boat trailer in the hills.
That's
right, I said "boat trailer". I had finally made the move to
Austin and after a couple of temporary jobs began to work steadily, not
as an illustrator or fine artist, per se, but as my own boss, with clients
that kept me supplied with a constant stream of good paying and somewhat
creatively stimulating work. So I could afford the 4x4 and also the boat.
I set up the truck with camping supplies and headed for the wilderness
at every opportunity, where I photographed nature, and then would return
to my studio and paint landscapes in my spare time.
A truck, like a car, represents security, but a truck is even more specific.
It is a work vehicle and represents "job" security issues. And
this one, running perfectly, as it did, was a perfect, symbolic representation,
in my outer life, of my advertising career at the time. I was just where
I wanted to be for the first time in my life. But this only lasted about
8 years...and things went downhill from there...causing me to sell both
the boat and the truck, as well as a classic Mustang "fun car"
that I had fixed up as a daily driver.
Because I had lost my clients to various changes
taking place (one was actually murdered by her husband), and I still had
it in my mind that I was going to be a landscape painter into my old age,
hard times again hit in the early '90's. Concurrently my vehicles have
been older models, but adequate for my needs...and have steadily gotten
better as the decade progressed. (If the truth be known my perfect car
would be a brand new late sixties car...like the GTO I bought as my first
new car when I entered the service.) Concurrently, I've had to struggle
to make ends meet but somehow I always seem to "get there"...learning
as I go. Presently I'm driving a classic Nissan 280Z...from the last model
year they made it. I love the car but I'm beginning to feel the need for
a 4x4 truck again, since a couple hundred pounds of dogs and myself fills
that Z car up pretty fast. And I'm feeling the urge to get back to the
wilderness again. Plus, the job situation is improving, since I've transferred
my design skills to the computer and web design, while E-commerce has
finally arrived on the scene in a real way.
Conclusions
Can
you begin to see how the vehicles themselves served as metaphoric indicators
in my life of what was previously an emotional issue within the self?
This is how LifeDreams work. Everything in your life can be interpreted
metaphorically just as if it were a dream. And it will give you the same
story that the interpretation of your dreams do. The only difference is
that dreams give us a preview of what our emotional state of consciousness
will bring into our lives, whereas LifeDreams are after the fact, and
are based on the results of that prior emotional state of consciousness.
I
intend to add a section about "the house" metaphor when I can
get around to it. This also followed the same pattern over the years.
Changing houses represents changing "the mind". And I will show
you how mysterious and pesky roof leaks dogged me for over twenty years...while
specifically highlighting just "what", within my own consciousness,
was causing all of this trouble in my life. This might be a better illustration
of how LifeDreams work than the "car" one above provided. Stay
tuned. I will get around to it...eventually.
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