It is only in modern times that the dream, this fleeting and insignificant looking product of the psyche, has met with such profound contempt. Formerly it was esteemed as a harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods. Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and this it does with astounding completeness.
Carl Jung
I’ve been dreaming of bridges.
Crazy ones that ride like rollercoasters in physics-defying loops. Driving straight off of one, being thrown from the back window and somehow managing to haul myself by my fingernails back to safety (dream logic).
You get the point.
While I was in North Carolina, I road across several extremely long bridges connecting pieces of the Outer Banks. I believe I crossed a bridge a total of a dozen times.
What you should know about this: Driving over the bridges that connect this part of Ontario to New York is the reason I will never drive again over the bridges that connect this part of Ontario to New York. I’ll ride, but won’t drive.
They scare me. I have a fear of heights and I also have a fear of that call to crash my car and careen off said bridge (the call of the void, or L'appel du Vide). Oddly, I don’t feel much of this strange, twisty panic when I walk across a (safe, sturdy) bridge, so long as I avoid the edges.
The edges bring increased heart rate, sweats, shallow breathing, a trembling in my legs.
We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
Carl Jung, The Red Book
Are we all afraid of the edges?
Maybe not in a bridge or height sense, but how often do we pull back from new experiences? A crossing over to the other side of ourselves, of sorts?
For me, this is rooted in psychology.
I’ve been diagnosed as being bipolar and having borderline personality disorder. Sometimes I nod along and think this makes sense. Sometimes I feel as if psychology as a whole has evolved not from disordered people but a disordered world.
But because right now the general consensus is that I’m the problem, going to the edge is something I’m reluctant to do: When I have a new idea that I might believe in whole-heartedly, I wonder if people will perceive it as a symptom of my disordered brain. When I feel extremely passionate about a cause, I imagine people will believe it’s because I’m unstable (this is not all me “imagining”; I’ve had people tell me just this in different words).
There’s a fine line to walk here.
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