Teddy’s Message

Teddy’s Message

“Dreams are the touchstones of our character.” Henry David Thoreau

Do you dream? If so, do you remember your dreams?

Dreams have always fascinated me. On the one hand, they can be so mysterious and elusive in meaning. Or they can be quite literal — like a banner spelling out a message just for you.

The dream world is magical; it reveals a deeper layer of our lives — hidden treasures waiting to be discovered and understood.

I recently had a symbolic dream involving a dear black lab mix named Teddy.

In the dream, I am in a high rise apartment building overlooking the city. Standing near an open window, I can feel the breeze blowing in. The sky is a bright blue with almost no clouds. It is a beautiful day.

All of a sudden, Teddy comes busting through the door and bounding into the room. “Teddy!” I exclaim in a surprised voice. “What are you doing here?” He gallops into the room, passes right by me, and in an instant jumps through the open window. I watch him sail out of sight as he hurtles downward toward the concrete. I gasp in horror at what I know will be his death — the end of his life forever.

I watch helplessly, knowing this is out of my control, knowing I can’t do anything to save him.

As if in slow motion, he lands on the concrete, all fours splayed out. I feel a moment of stunned shock as I hold my breath. Then, by some crazy miracle, Teddy jumps up and starts running again, disappearing from view.

In the next moment, Teddy is by my side again, jumping up and down, obviously very proud of his high dive act, excited that he showed me his magic trick. I swear he had a smile on his face.

And then I woke up.

For the rest of the day, I thought of that dream. In fact, I couldn’t shake it. I wondered what it meant. So, I did what I always do with my dreams — I set out to decode the meaning and messages in all of its many symbolic details.

One of the main themes that came to me was one of courage and resilience — how we often go through scary “windows” in our lives and feel afraid we’ll die. If Teddy showed me anything, it was this: “We always land on our feet, no matter what the scary moments are. We just have to trust that, each time, we will land, rebound and get a chance to start over again.”

In fact, this is where the magic of the dreamland awakens us to a deeper understanding of ourselves.

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