APRIL 25, 2024 – Often I experience highly symbolic dreams. Perhaps the most symbolic occurred 27 years ago during a particularly stressful period at work. In that dream I found myself in a game of pickle-in-the-middle—playing the role of pickle. The other two players were my boss, with whom in reality I’d long been tangling, and his boss who in reality had long been bamboozled by my boss. In the dream those players volleyed a deflated football just beyond reach over my head.
Last night I experienced another very symbolic dream. The setting was our family cabin, though as is so often the case in dreams, the “family cabin” was wholly rearranged from reality. A sizable group of guests were present, some crowding a dock, a bunch mingling along the shoreline, quite a few more treading armpit-deep water. I myself was among the swimmers, but I was the sole waterborne person aware of and puzzled by the presence of our long-retired heavy steel boat cradle, its top-side cast-iron crank inexplicably submerged.
Just as I reached into the water to grasp the crank, a guy dog-paddled so close I was afraid I’d strike him in the jaw as I wound the shaft. The guy was none other than . . . the Duly Defeated.
My (negative) reaction to him was wholly apolitical, or at least none of my personal politics surfaced in my dream state. Rather, I simply found him remarkably off-putting. Wearing only swimming trunks (I assumed he had the decency to be wearing some), he presented himself as a remarkably blubbery old man with splotchy skin and disheveled wet hair patching a balding pate. He was unaware of personal space—his own, as well as mine. His dog-paddle resembled that of a little kid who equated splash with dash and had no directional control. Apart from his unappealing up-close image, his presence was simply unwanted interference. He reminded me of an oversized friendless third-grader with low intelligence and zero social skills. My sole wish was that he would figure out how to turn his lame dog-paddle around and go away.
As in reality, however, my wish was not to be fulfilled. Instead, the Duly Defeated wanted to turn the crank of the inoperable boat lift. I abhorred the thought of physical contact required to push him away, so I went with “Plan B”—a distraction.
“How about going out in the sailboat?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, immediately losing interest in the not-so-shiny object that a second before had attracted his attention.
“Good. I’ll go get the sailboat, but it’s down at the other dock,” I said, pointing to the boat at its mooring several hundred feet away. Of course, I wanted only to get away from the guy. I had no intention of taking the Duly Defeated for a cruise . . . except . . . Seeing that the best he could do in the water was the dog-paddle (while touching the bottom) . . . “the opportunity” occurred to me, but I quickly extinguished thought of it. No matter how obnoxious and pathetic the guy was, I thought (in the dream), pushing him overboard wasn’t right, wasn’t morally or ethically justified under any circumstance.
The scene yielded to another and yet another, but upon waking with the morning light, I recalled the dream about the Duly Defeated. With full consciousness restored, I reassessed my moral and ethical conclusion in the dream by posing an unsettling question: Unless I were a member of the Supreme Court with the chance to join at least four colleagues in preventing conversion of the office of president into the throne of monarch, under the circumstances of the dream, would I be saddled with the democratic duty to push the guy overboard, then turn myself in to the authorities and accept the consequences?
A few seconds later I was relieved to see the symbolism of the dream: the boat represented next November’s ballot box.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
