Just My Thoughts

Christina M. Meide

PAGE TWO

My son did not have any specific interests in high school. In fact, he absolutely despised school from about the sixth grade on, considering it a complete waste of time when there were so many other things to be doing. He did have (and still does) an amazing natural ability as an artist which we discovered when he was about four years old, but is much like me and only does it when the urge strikes him. He was never the socialite that his older sister was, preferring to do many things in solitude, but as he's grown older, he has begun unfolding in the most incredible ways and has found socializing to be a wonderful activity.

My 16 year old daughter is a good student, a singer, and a writer of poetry, songs and short stories. She is an extreme social butterfly, talking about 100 miles per minute, and people seem to like being with her. Her attitude is always upbeat and there is always a smile on her face, but she keeps fairly quiet in school. She seems to be the one people come to when they are needing someone to listen to them, yet she can definitely hold her own in a conversation. There is nothing shy about her and she has extreme patience when dealing with others.

My youngest daughter is 11 going on 25. It seems to be her pressure to make herself known and respected by her older sister (still living at home) and to grow up much quicker than necessary. She can be a great deal of fun with the typical characteristics of younger children (not knowing when enough is enough), but she is also very intelligent and the older kids have accepted her as an equal or protect her fiercely as she does with them. She has an inbuilt nature to be very caring about others, though sometimes showing it in negative ways, but she is the first to give a hug or lend an ear if someone is upset. Her problem solving abilities are amazing. She is a good student in the sense of always doing her work, but does not find studying all that enjoyable. She loves to write, loves to draw, and loves to sing, but has not found that specific niche as yet that she can call her own.

Now the reason that I have given descriptions of my children is to show you, after having reviewed how they dream, the major differences between them. Their dreams, like their personalities, are completely different from one another, but the way they dream seems to have some reflection of the people they are.

For example, my 16 year old daughter can talk your ear off, as I said at 100 miles per minute, and she dreams in massive detail and in length (just like she speaks). My 11 year old dreams logically and seriously which seems to be the way she is geared in life - able to have fun, but quite serious in her endeavor to fit in where it is most important for her to feel at home. Her dreams are almost like lessons for her on a regular basis, to help her figure out what life has in store for her and where she belongs in the scheme of things.

The Night Watchman is a whirlwind of changes when it comes to dreams. In his waking life, he is very social, though occasionally wanting nothing but solitude. His main interests all seem to point to things of the past - older music, older movies, historical places, and the old radio shows. It's not at all unusual to be socializing somewhere and have the conversation turn to "how things used to be", or the discussion of old movies or simpler times.

Of course, being a radio newsman keeps him in the here and now, but he is always searching for more exciting things to talk about and desiring times past when radio and newspaper did not have to bow down to things being "politically correct". As it is now, the public is treated with kid gloves and hidden truths that shouldn't be hidden. Freedom of speech is not "freedom" any longer, but dictated by ridiculous rules and regulations that should never have been allowed.

The Night Watchman's dreams are normally about people he has known in the past, and often, they are with famous people who have passed, but have the same kinds of interests as The Night Watchman.

He often relates having done a jam session with a famous, deceased guitar player or drummer or having an interview with a famous, deceased talk show host. That kind of thing. At other times, he will dream of friends he knew in high school and college, or old girlfriends or places that he's visited.

Once in awhile, like all of us, he will have absolutely crazy dreams that seem to make no sense at all. Usually we can determine the meaning behind these nonsensical dreams, connecting it with something that is going on in the here and now that has been on his mind. Again, these dreams usually involve people of the past.

He dreams, just as my children do, in a way that will make sense to them, using specific areas of their personality to get the messages across. It's really very intriguing.

I find it quite easy to decipher the dreams of my children, The Night Watchman and others, but it is very difficult for me to decipher my own. My dreams, the ones I am able to remember, are usually very strange in content, changing subject matter in seconds. Rarely do I seem to remember dreams that have any logic or grasp on the reality of time that we are a part of every day. However, I spend my days working on different kinds of puzzles, always analyzing the best way to do things, so it stands to reason that my dreams would be offered to me in the same way.

Just the other night I remember dreaming of having "miniature" live animals. Upon awakening, the only animal I could remember was a cow. A miniature cow that I was trying to figure out how to feed so it wouldn't starve to death.

I remember fretting over this for quite awhile in my dream, trying different things to feed it when suddenly my mind became logical and I determined that grain and hay from down the road would be good though I would have to chop it extremely tiny for the little cow to be able to eat it. This was the end of the dream, though I am aware that there was more to the dream earlier on, none of those details would come forward.

In trying to figure out what this might mean to me, I had to look at what was going on in my life. At the time of the dream, I had spent the last week pretty much laid up on the couch with my back refusing to work properly. Due to this problem, I was unable to spend the day on the computer working on the website as I would normally be doing. So, rather than spend the entire day watching television, which I'm not much into anyway, I worked on and finished the book that I've been working on with psychic photographer, Ron Bowers. I was not able to do housework of any kind or drive or do anything for my children that couldn't be done from the couch.

The most trying thing on my mind at the time though was the change in our second website. I had worked many long hours creating the Iowa site and was almost done with the Minnesota site when we realized that this would take far too much time away from The Night Watchman Chronicles. So, since we already had a server for the Iowa site, we needed to find something else that would fill that area that would be an extension of The Night Watchman website. The Night Watchman came up with a wonderful idea which just meant figuring out how to get things done in a timely manner and how to set it up.

I believe that miniature cow in my dream was the extension site to The Night Watchman site. Struggling to determine how to feed the cow to help it to survive, then finally figuring out the most logical answer of grain and hay, gave me the understanding that things are much simpler than I'm allowing them to be. We will be able to add the extension and make it an integral part of The Night Watchman site and we will survive.

As I'm sure you can tell from this article, I am a firm believer that each of us dreams the answers to the many questions that pop up in our waking lives. Often these answers come out in strange ways, but if you look at things logically, breaking them down and matching them with different areas in your life, you may discover the answer is much clearer than you thought.

My belief is that there is a reason for everything we are capable of doing. I can't believe that dreams have been given to us just for the purpose of entertainment. I believe very strongly that they have a large part to play in our life here on earth. Perhaps our continued education, or guidance, if you prefer, from "home". After all, could we really make it here all by ourselves?