Last night was pretty freaky. It was the first time in years that I woke up with my heart pounding after being brutally killed in my dream. More specifically, my brain was devoured by a carnivorous zombie… In all seriousness, WTF brain? It’s not like some demon imposed this dream on me to mess with my sanity; it sprung up from somewhere within my own mind. Why?

For a more complete picture, the part that I can remember started with me witnessing a friend of mine on a battleground fighting against a group of zombies. He was fairly injured and looked like he was struggling, but I don’t remember him calling out for help. The whole scene reminded me of the TV show The Walking Dead (picture Daryl swinging around a club instead of using his badass crossbow). Unfortunately for my friend, he had maybe 5 seconds of experience fighting zombies instead of 7 seasons. He wasn’t doing too well.

Instead of being out on the battlefield, however, I was inside a safe blockade away from all of the zombies. None of them could touch me! So, in trying to be a good friend, I teleported him into the blockade with me using highly complex dream mechanics. As far as I could tell, we were both safe then.

Something didn’t seem quite right though. My friend still looked completely tense and uncomfortable. He started to put his guard down, but he was by no means relaxed. Then, out of nowhere, a freaking zombie popped out from behind him (or within him) and devoured his head in one bite. I started screaming and then the zombie lunged at my head. Darkness. I woke up. Heart pounding.

Dreams can be strange, but I am under the impression that they can be extremely meaningful. Some people think they are just random electrical discharges that happen in the brain at night, or that they once served as a sort of preparation for survival situations. These explanations are simple ways to discount the credibility of dreams, but what if something can actually be learned from them? Since I still vividly remember the dream this morning, I want to try to pick it apart and see what it could mean.

For one, it’s interesting that the monsters my friend was fighting were zombies. They are typically associated with terms like living dead, putrid, mindless, and carnivorous. They are either old corpses that rose from the grave or normal people that were infected by some widespread disease and no longer think for themselves. To add an abstract dimension to the zombie as a symbol, they could represent a dead, rotten idea that is trying to consume the current, living society.

I thought I was helping my friend by simply removing him from the external battle that I saw him fighting. After I did that, however, he did not react like I thought he would. Instead of relaxing, he still didn’t seem removed from the battle. His external situation might have been better, but mentally he could not get over the issue he was facing with the zombies.

I really don’t remember if the zombie came from behind him or within him, but either way the blockade I was in had been thoroughly secure up until the point I brought him in. It is entirely possible that I accidentally teleported a zombie with him (my understanding of dream physics isn’t super great). If, however, I accept that the zombie came from within him, the situation makes a ton of sense. His external situation was a direct representation of the internal struggle he was having with the zombies. By just removing him from the external situation, his internal problem was still vibrantly alive.

With that analysis, the dream is actually extremely interesting (and terrifying). I’m not trying to say that external situations people are currently going through are just in their minds (although that might be the case). Regardless, I think it is true that sometimes solving a person’s external problem just relieves temporary symptoms of a much deeper issue. The dream didn’t provide me with many specifics, but symbolically it means a lot. Maybe instead of trying to patch up symptoms, it is more useful to address the problems on the battlefield. Instead of teleporting my friend into the blockade, maybe I should have picked up a shovel and started smashing some zombie heads with him!

Picture source: businessinsider.com