Time and Clocks in Dreams

Last week I heard a dream featuring the symbols of time and a clock. So I was thinking about time when I saw Bill Boyd’s Shipwreck photo. The image evokes the passage of decades, the weathering and the patient work of oxidation, stripping a ship down to its bones. It’s a vivid launch point from which to think about time in dreams.

I’ve had and heard many dreams in which time plays a part. Often it takes the form of “I’m supposed to be there/do that/start at a certain time and I realize it’s two hours later already.” Archetypally, this sort of dream is closely related, in my mind, to the “I’m signed up for a class I didn’t know I had and now I have to take a test I know nothing about” dream, and the “I’m onstage with a part in a play I’ve never heard of/don’t know the name of and have no idea what my lines are” dream. All of these dream themes reflect a meta-level in my life, in which hours, tests, and roles I play are all metaphors for how I navigate my life.

When time and clocks show up in dreams, I think about the fact that time is how we measure change. I count the days of my life through the messes that I create and clean up, the meals I eat and digest, the work I give time to, the conversations I have with others, and the passage of the sun. I measure the weeks and months by the changing weather and the cycles of the moon, the years by the growth of my children and the aches and shifting shape of my body. I imagine the passage of decades in the image of a ship’s bones gone to rust in the sand. We call some of that change progress, some decline, but we measure our progress and decline through time. So how I dream of time and what I’m trying to do in the dream can give me clues about how I’m doing.

If I’m running late, or it’s later than I thought, that might suggest that a part of me would like to be making better progress toward my goals. If I can’t read my watch, it might mean that time is not the crucial factor in the situation. If the clock is running backward, I’d have to ask myself if there’s some futile hope that I could turn back time, or if I should be retreating to an earlier stage in the project I’m working on. So much depends on the context of the dream.

Finally, sand in a dream always brings up for me “the sands of time.” So if I’m trying to climb a sand dune in the dream, my progress or lack thereof would relate to how I’m moving through time, at least at one level. I expect the metaphor arose from the use of hour-glasses, which provide a visual signal for time’s passage.