Missing Again and Again
What Does It Mean?
I have this reoccurring dream, a strange one - one that I’ve had for a long, long time. It came again last night. The dream is neither scary, nor exciting. I don’t feel any trauma response when I wake up after it, and it doesn’t get in the way of my sleep. And the situation in which the dream takes place is almost always different.
But one thing always happens in the dream.
I miss the shot!
Over and over, situation after situation, I’m shooting a basketball and I miss. I don’t believe I’ve made one single shot in all the times I take a shot in my dreams.
Last night, the setting was a kitchen - my old kitchen at home growing up. Somehow - or rather for some reason - my father had installed a basketball hoop in the kitchen right next to the old sink. Adult me was there and I took a shot. And missed. Again!
All the dream decoder websites will tell you that missing a shot is a sign of stress or anxiety over not reaching a particular goal, or fear of failure. But in my waking life, I don’t think I feel any of that. I have always has some difficulty with anxiety, so that could explain some of it.
But a basketball hoop? I’m not a sports guy and honestly couldn’t name more than three or four basketball players. That seems like such an arbitrary and detached from reality way for my brain to tell me something is going on. Maybe my brain needs to change its symbolism to get whatever message through that it’s trying to teach me.
I mean, I’ve dreamed that so many times now - taking a shot in the lake, in a garage, in the woods - that it barely even has any practical effect on me anymore. Come on brain, keep up!
Little Bean has recently started playing basketball and I’ve been going to her games, so I suppose I’m more adjacent to basketball these days. Also, it just occurred to me that I’m equally terrible at basketball in real life, so there’s that.
Hey, wait a minute, is this even dreaming if the things you’re doing in real life are exactly the same as your dreams? Which is which? Maybe neither are real. Being caught in a never-ending missing-the-basket matrix sure would make for a boring movie.
Anyway, it’s sort of at the point now where if I actually make the basket, then I’m pretty sure that’s a sign that something is terribly wrong.
How about you? Reoccurring dreams keeping you up and confused at night? Tell us about it!
I often dream about my grandparents; even in my dreams, I know they've passed away, but they're somehow alive again. The most common plotline is they're selling their house (which my sister and I grew up in and inherited), forcing my sister and me to move, even though we don't want to. Maybe I'm worried we won't be able to keep the house in this economy?
As a general rule, I find that dreaming of what I'm doing by day means that I'm overdoing it. Particularly a problem when we've been at crunch time at work.