Prophecy

Prophecy

Slim pickings, dreams that I remember. Most of them are eminently forgettable, gone with the morning mist in the first moments of waking. The ones that remain are the important ones, the ones that speak to us. We remember them because they have something to say, whether or not we understand them from the outset.

There are problem-solving dreams, for instance. A very obvious example is a dream that I had when I was involved in an intense chess tournament. In a game that was adjourned overnight, I had managed to get myself into a bind from which no escape was apparent. That night I dreamed the answer, a series of moves that, in the morning, proved the route to victory.

That particular instance can be explained by the intense focus required to play competitive chess. The mind becomes so accustomed to sorting through patterns and combinations that it continues through sleep. But there are other dreams that are not so easy to explain.

In my life, I’ve had three prophetic dreams. How did I know they were prophetic? Firstly, because I remember them. Prophecy wouldn’t be much use if it were promptly forgotten, would it? So the first essential to a prophetic dream must be that it is remembered.

It must also contain some meaning, even in those moments immediately after waking. Meaning will expand over time and may eventually be transformed, but that initial understanding is what causes the mind to dwell on the dream and search for more meaning.

And then there’s the matter of it coming to pass. It’s when the dream comes true in reality that we can say with assurance that it was prophetic in nature. Without its apparent predictions actually occurring, such a dream would be merely a fancy or wishful thinking.

All of which leads me to the dream that I want to consider in this essay. It is the most recent of such dreams that I have experienced, and it happened some time in the mid-1980s. 1985 would be a reasonable but not guaranteed date. I’m not good at remembering dates.

The dream itself was quite simple in story line but there’s one thing about it that is strange. To understand this, I have to tell you about a dream I had long before this one. It was about flying. I don’t do flying dreams, although I understand many people do. Until the dream I’ve picked to describe, this earlier dream was the only flying dream I had ever managed. I say “managed” because it was a close-run thing. The dream placed me in the front yard of the house I lived in at the time. The yard was very large and open but bounded by tall pines. For some reason, I decided that I would have to take a run up to get airborne.

I ran across the yard as fast as I could, flapping my arms like mad and slowly, inch by inch, managed to get into the air. But I was getting awfully near the pines. It looked as if I wasn’t going to make it but, with an extra effort at the last moment, I flew just above them, my feet brushing the topmost branches as I went.

And that was it. Unlike others’ dreams, mine didn’t allow me the experience of glorious, effortless flight through the upper atmosphere. No, my dream ended as I escaped the pines and began the adventure. It didn’t seem fair at the time and it’s only now that I have travelled many miles by airliner that I understand that I’m really not built for flight. My body prefers that I remain in contact with solid earth at all times.

You will understand that this made me unprepared for the prophetic dream that was to follow years later. This, too, was a flying dream but a proper one this time. It began with me flying and was just like being in a plane, looking down on the earth below. At first, I flew over the green fields of England but soon was heading out over the Atlantic. I was low enough to see the swell and the occasional white tops to the waves. It looked cold and inhospitable but I was not afraid, even though there was no plane - it was just me, zooming quietly over the ocean.

This continued for some time, although it did not seem very long to me in the dream. A coastline began to appear in the blue distance and I thought immediately of America. As I came nearer, I could see that I was arriving at a large city with towering skyscrapers and acres of buildings stretching to the horizon. It must be New York, I thought as I began to get lower as if to land there.

The dream ended before my feet actually touched down.

So I was left with the memory of the dream. Easy enough to interpret, I thought. It must surely be a prediction that I will go to America and land in New York. That seemed very unlikely at the time, since I had no desire to go there and was quite happy in England. But the dream would not go away. I shrugged and allowed it the thought that what will be, will be.

Nineteen years went by, through most of which I never yearned or even considered going to the States. It just wasn’t on my agenda.

And then, quite suddenly, a complicated series of events took place and I found myself flying (in a plane this time) to America. There and back several times. Eventually I was drawn to a little place just outside the city that my dream had shown me - but it wasn’t New York. By that time I’d seen the soaring heights of many American cities but the one that captured me for good was Boston. I guess that, from the air above the ocean, it looks much like New York.

You could say, of course, that it was entirely coincidental that the dream came before the event. That makes it more difficult to explain why I should remember the what is, after all, a fairly ordinary dream. Yet it was more vivid and memorable to me than thousands of much more spectacular dreams, I’m sure.

That may be something to note down, in fact. It’s the remembering of a dream that makes it special. There’s always a reason for it.


Word count: 1,075
For Out of The Fog Contest, August 2023
Prompt: A dream that you remember the most.