ABOUT COCKROACHES

Robb from Altadena, CA, USA sent this one.  He’s a Clerical Director at work with three people reporting to him.

In the dream, my team and I make plans to have lunch together on a Friday... just to hang out and have some laughs together.  We usually can’t have lunch together because someone always has to be covering the file room, but in this dream it’s okay. There’s a food truck that comes during lunch to the parking lot which has great Mexican food.  I decide I should make sure it’s the same cooks so I have lunch at the truck by myself on the day before the lunch gathering.

Dreaming about having a lunch gathering suggests that there are common issues among your team which needs to be addressed.  Your psyche is bringing this to your attention.  Maybe as their supervisor,  you need to bring complaints to their attention, or correct some lazy habits they’ve gotten into.

I order my favorite burrito and it’s as good as ever, except I notice there’s a cockroach in it.  I’m a little grossed out.  Do I get pissed and demand a refund? Do I cancel lunch?  What?  I throw my burrito away.  Then I start thinking… come on, dude, this is a truck which travels who knows where.  Roaches are everywhere and they’ve existed since the beginning of time and will probably live through the end of time, and they certainly know how to climb into a truck with food in it. 

Apparently, there’s a little dilemma at work which is bothering you, and you’re not sure whether to talk to your team about it.  Your psyche is sending you a message.

First of all, you’re absolutely right about the cockroaches.  If a person lives in an apartment building and one apartment has roaches, then you can bet all apartments will get roaches.  A tenant would have to aggressively defend an apartment to keep his/her own place free of them.  Cockroaches in a dream can symbolize themselves or something else.  In this dream, I think they symbolize the irritations and annoyances which are common among people who work or live together in a shared environment.  Being uniquely different from each other in many ways, you and your co-workers will find yourselves being irritated or annoyed by one another.  Your job is to maintain paper files for your company, so maybe “A” has a bad habit of punching the holes wrong and so the paper sits inside the file folder with half an inch of paper sticking out.  Or, maybe “B” always puts off filing his assigned folders until the last minute, so it’s never ready when an executive asks for it.

These are personality differences which have existed since the beginning of time and will last until the end of time… like cockroaches.  You may be wondering whether it’s worth it to “reveal” these irksome annoyances in the open.  You yourself have come to terms with this pesky problem by simply deciding not to “angst” about it (i.e., trash it).  On the other hand, perhaps team members have complained to you about these little irritations. 

I decide not to change plans and we go to lunch on Friday.  Sure enough they all find cockroaches in their tacos, enchiladas and burritos.  They all start bitching and wanting to leave and I say, “Look guys, my burrito is delicious and it doesn’t have anything in it. Exchange it for another one.  It’s no big deal.” 

Lunch gatherings are positively oriented gatherings.  The ambiance is to share “nourishment.”   In other words, the idea is to provide “food for thought”… something to “chew” on.  Robb’s psyche has just told him how to handle his predicament.  Go ahead and bring all the little irritations and annoyances out into the open, but do it with the goal of ultimately nourishing everyone so that they can grow and be supported in their growth.

Let’s just face it… we live among viruses, bacteria and cockroaches.  In fact, without certain bacteria in our intestines, our food would not be metabolized properly and we’d all rot inside.  .  I used to work in a place where everyone called the food truck the “Roach Coach,” and everyone still ate the food from those trucks. And, come to think of it, remember that movie, “Empire of the Sun,” starring Christian Bale as a little boy in prison selling roaches to starving prisoners?   Nominated for 6 oscars and directed by Steven Spielberg.  The truth is out there!