by Liz Moore

Created on: January 14, 2010

Many years ago, I had what seemed to be a boring dream about myself and my family standing on a street corner outside a 7-11.  We weren't doing anything too exciting or interesting in the dream.  We were just standing on the street corner waiting for a signal to change so we could cross the street. 

That dream, like so many others, faded from my conscious mind as soon as I awoke the following morning and I went on about my business.

Several years after that, our family moved to a suburb of Tokyo, Japan, since my husband was a member of the United States Air Force and we were sent on a three-year accompanied tour.  We first lived in a small Japanese apartment just off base and our family went out to explore our new environment.  The area around our apartment was interesting: streets so tiny they could only accommodate one car at a time, houses built so close to each other you could literally touch the wall of the next one from the window of your own, giant good luck flower arrangements set up outside new businesses, the clack and clatter of the local train rushing by, and even a few older women wearing traditional kimonos.

When we reached the downtown area of our little suburb we found a row of familiar businesses: Dunkin Donuts, McDonald's, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, to name just a few.  These familiar sights were mingled in with a large Japanese department store and just across from the local train station. We turned a corner and stopped to await a signal change so we could cross the street when my mind reeled with surprise.  The dream I'd had several years earlier about standing on a corner outside a 7-11 returned to me with such force that I felt nauseous.  The exact location upon which we were standing at that moment was the very one I had dreamed about while we were still living in the Midwestern United States; well before we'd found out that we were going to be stationed in Japan.   

How could my mind have come up with an advance view of a location I had never before seen in a place I'd never thought I would visit?

The dream I had wasn't prophetic in a life-changing way, but did make me wonder more about my subconscious.  We know so little about the mind other than the fact that we only use a small portion of it throughout our lives.

Each of us has probably had a sense of deja vous at one time or another.  I wonder if this feeling may be related to prophetic dreams we've had that we may not remember, when our minds have given us advance warning of some event to come.  If these dreams are as bland as the one I had about what I thought was a familiar event, we may not realize we've had them unless the realization of the dream is different enough to stand out from the normal course of our lives.  Otherwise, we may just have that uneasy sensation that we've done something before.

This is something to think about the next time you have that nagging familiar feeling about a place, person, or event.  You too may have had a prophetic dream that you don't remember.

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