Why have I kept dreaming about baby in need for last two weeks?

By David McElroy · March 26, 2019

The dream always starts the same way. I’m alone in a forest much like this one and I suddenly realize there’s a baby girl somewhere here who needs my help.

The details can differ some nights, but the essentials are the same. It feels surreal. Somehow, I know there’s something symbolic about this. I know whose baby it is and I know she needs me to find her baby and care for the little girl temporarily.

I always find the baby quickly. Most of the time, she’s lying on the forest floor. One time, she was stretched out on a couch in the middle of the forest. (Why was there a couch in the woods?) But one thing is always the same.

As soon as I pick this baby up and cradle her close to my body, I feel instant love and fierce protectiveness. I know I would die to protect this precious child who I’ve never seen before.

Why did I start having this dream about two weeks ago? Why have I dreamed variations of it four or five or six times? (I’ve lost track.) What is it in our minds that creates these nightly dramas?

I grew up fascinated by dreams and I read all I could find about the subject. Sigmund Freud’s book, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” was on one of our book shelves. It was confusing reading for a young child, but I read it over and over to figure out what I could.

When I got older, I read more modern psychologists and brain scientists say that dreams are meaningless. It seems as though I read a lot of things which claimed dreams were nothing but random neurons firing and the stories we experience were simply our minds trying to make some sense out of the randomness.

I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe it now.

I can’t explain what dreams mean. I can’t begin to say whether they’re messages from our unconscious mind or if we’re picking up something from the “collective unconscious” of humanity. Or something else entirely.

I’m willing to accept that many dreams are probably just random stories. I’ve experienced a lot of dreams that didn’t feel meaningful at all.

But every now and then, something in my dreams feels terribly important — in ways that I can’t explain to myself or to you. Something in my gut simply whispers, “Pay attention here. There’s something you need to understand in this.”

That’s the way I’ve been feeling about the dreams about the baby in the woods.

As far as I know, this baby isn’t my biological daughter. I think I know who the mother is. But I don’t know why the girl is in need. I don’t know where the mother is. I don’t know why she needs my help.

In every version of the dream I’ve had so far, I just held the baby closely for the entire time she was with me. I didn’t want to let her go. I was fierce about wanting to protect her. I felt a strong sense of responsibility to her mother, but I also felt such an overwhelming love for the baby that I would have sacrificed anything for her even if I hadn’t known her mother.

In every dream so far, the mother has taken over nurture of the baby again at some point. I’ve been unclear how that happens or how I give her back. I just know that I’m very happy when my responsibility is over — not because I don’t have to take care of the child anymore, but because it has felt like such an important honor to protect her.

Why would I dream all of that? Why would I create new versions, as if to emphasize that there’s something important to see here? I have no idea.

I believe Carl Jung was onto the right track when he decided there is a collective unconscious of some sort — some sort of spiritual or mental “field” of some kind that we all tap into at times. It sounds like nonsense to a modern scientific mind, but it somehow feels true to me.

What if there’s a child who needs my help? What if there’s a mother who needs me to help her daughter right now? What if I somehow know that in a dream state?

We are mostly mistaken about what things are important in our lives. We imagine that our obvious, conscious problems that need solutions are the things which are most deserving of our attention, but I suspect we’re wrong.

We have to solve our day-to-day problems, of course. But I suspect the things which are most important in our lives are those wisps of spiritual truth which are whispered in our unconscious minds or unconscious states, even if we can’t explain what’s going on.

Somewhere, there’s a little girl who needs my help. Maybe her mother needs me. I don’t know. I haven’t yet figured out enough about how to listen well enough to hear what I need to hear.

But I’m willing to hear. I’m willing to learn. I wish I’d been more willing to figure this out years ago.

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A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

For four years, Donald Trump’s supporters screamed that everything that went wrong was the fault of Joe Biden. They were sometimes right and they were sometimes delusional. (Anybody who knows me understands that I can’t stand Biden any more than I can stand Trump, just for different reasons.) But for two months, Trump has rampaged through U.S. political life — vandalizing pretty much everything in sight — and the vast majority of his supporters are silent at best. Many watch as he blows up the world economy and they make excuses for him. They’re in absolute denial, even about things that Trump is doing very intentionally. Anybody who understands economics and history knows that tariffs are a terrible idea from a pragmatic point of view. Anybody who values individual freedom knows that tariffs are massive taxes on individuals — and they’re a tool of political control over the ability of people to trade freely. Trump is the antithesis of everything which political conservatives stood for just a few years ago. It’s far past time for people who claim to be conservatives to reclaim the principles and values which they used to claim — and stop this mad man before he can accelerate the day when we experience economic and social collapse. Open your eyes to reality and reject this lying narcissist.

On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

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