I’m Okay, You’re Not So Hot: The Roots of Prejudice
When a dream startles us awake, it demands our attention.
I opened the door to find an attractive Pakistani woman on my doorstep. She asked to come in to borrow a cake pan. I let her in and told her to look in the cupboards as I was fixing coffee for my family and preoccupied.
My parents were visiting for the first time; my sister and her new husband were also there. I was anxious to get the coffee started when the woman asked if I had a certain type of cake pan. I did not and told her she could go to the store nearby and probably find one. She resisted this idea and suggested that I could use a pan like that; why don’t I buy one?
I was incensed. In my mind, I had let this woman into my home, offered to loan her what items I had to make her stupid cake and then she had the nerve to suggest I buy the cake pan that she needed. I forced her bodily from my home.
In the light of day, this dream (like so many) seems stupid. But someone once advised that in order to unearth the cause of a dream, we must dissect the root of its emotion. I awoke enraged. What was the nature of this...