I should preface this first section by saying that in our modern age, dream symbolism and dream analysis is often bogus. Granted, there are many traditions that consider dreams to be sacred (gates of horn and ivory, anyone?). But those aren't what I'm talking about; I'm talking New Age-y stuff. I'm talking that one cliche about trains in tunnels, the people on Tiktok who say that lucid dreaming is actually shifting to another reality (god, don't get me started), and those books you find at hippie bookstores with glossaries of What It Means If You See [insert some random thing here] In Your Dreams. My belief is that if you really wanna analyze your dreams, you have to think about what they mean to you and your own past experiences. Anyway.

Maybe it's because I've been on a lot of road trips in my life, but travel has always been a recurring motif in my dreams. Airports, hotels, highways, trains... You name it, I've dreamed about it. My favorite travel dreams are those with an otherworldly, scenic destination at the end. Often the landscape along the road will have rolling hills, mountains, and dense foliage. Makes sense; earth has always been my element.

Lately, I've been having one particular recurring dream about riding a train across the Alps. I've never even been to Europe.

But does it mean anything?

Once someone told me that these dreams meant my spirit was traveling. I know I literally just said that New Age dream analysis is often bogus, but I'd like to believe there's a kernel of truth to that. After all, as much as I like chilling out at home, I love exploring new places and drinking in their scenery. One of my favorite video games is basically a walking simulator!

Even when I was a kid, I used to spend the entire ride on the school bus just staring out the window and watching the world go by. I guess you could say that's how my spirit travels.