I dreamt that I was in Italy, at the beach with my wife and in-laws. This particular beach is one I used to go to a lot with my parents when I was a kid. We were lying down on some beach loungers, just chilling, tanning ourselves. I got bored though, it was very hot under the sun so I excused myself to go and walk around the place. Before I started, but after leaving them, I got the idea of why not take the public bus and go into the nearby town and maybe have something to eat. So that's what I did. The bus took me through streets I didn't really know, and have never seen in the real world, but I didn't think much of it at the time.

Once there, I got off the bus and thanked the driver. Thankfully she didn't ask me to pay the fare because I had absolutely no cash on me. I resolved I needed to find an ATM and get some cash, but I was afraid of asking people since I didn't know how to say ATM in Italian.

I walked around a bit, enjoying the shade of the buildings and the slight, salty breeze blowing all about me. Eventually I saw a restaurant, I think it was a Asian-vegetarian restaurant, and sat down to eat. I ordered my meal at the counter and once I had my plate of non-descript green stuff I made my way to find a table, but there were only few, long tables, so I said to myself "what the hell" and just made my way to the nearest one. This table was already occupied by a group of about 6 or so people, all younger than me. One guy and the rest women, and they all seemed to be chatting amiably. In my social anxiety I didn't speak to them besides a simple greeting as I sat down. They eventually were talking of something and I contributed to the conversation, after which I became quick friends with them.

After the restaurant we all went out and walked around a bit. I don't know how or why but eventually we made our way to a church I think, or another large, mostly empty building. Maybe it was a train station. They wanted to take a selfie and me, being the tallest of them, offered to take it as my arm could reach the furthest.

It was surprisingly hard for me to take a selfie. The thought that my wife frequently tells me that I suck at taking pictures kept going round and round in my head, as I tried to fit everyone in the frame while struggling to keep my phone upright as I snapped the picture. I remember at one point I took a picture of the top of the heads of the group and the ceiling, and then one of the women called out saying I hadn't included her in the picture! Thankfully, the whole group didn't seem to mind my foibles, and were actually rather amused by them. I had the feeling that Italian people liked to pose and take selfies. Eventually, I focused on what I was doing, reworked my grip around the phone, and took a good selfie that we were all happy with.

Laughing, we went outside and walked around a bit more. The light of sunset shined all around us and I thought of my wife and my in-laws, wondering if they were worried about where I'd gone to. I thought about just giving her a call, or even sending her a message, but I had this idea that if I did that would bother her, and that would make me feel like I needed to go back now. I didn't want to go back yet, so I didn't call or tell her anything, deciding it was probably better if I just told her everything after it had happened rather than explain myself why I was going to do it in the first place.

We ended up at yet another restaurant. I don't remember quite what it was. By this point I was quite fond of all of them, but knew that I would soon be leaving. This wasn't entirely a sad thought, as now I knew them and we could chat via messages, meet up some other day. I was also surprised with myself as to how easy it was to make a connection with these people. I saw I could do this again and again, always meeting new folks. I wondered if that's how my brother did it, who likes to go out an pick up friends, as he likes to call it.

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The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about their dream is what Jung tends to say about the mind always looking for equilibrium (what he calls compensation).

The fundamental mistake regarding the nature of the unconscious is probably this: it is commonly supposed that its contents have only one meaning and are marked with an unalterable plus or minus sign. In my humble opinion, this view is too naive. The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does. Every process that goes too far immediately and inevitably calls forth compensations, and without these there would be neither a normal metabolism nor a normal psyche. In this sense we can take the theory of compensation as a basic law of psychic behavior. Too little on one side results in too much on the other. Similarly, the relation between conscious and unconscious is compensatory. This is one of the best-proven rules of dream interpretation. When we set out to interpret a dream, it is always helpful to ask: What conscious attitude does it compensate?

So what is the dream compensating for? Well, on the surface the message is pretty clear: the dream is making me feel that I can be social and meet new people. It's directly counteracting the social anxiety that I have in my real life, and the feelings I sometimes have of social ineptitude. Just don't worry about it it seems to say.

There are some other curious elements that I can't quite place though: the ATM and the fact I don't have cash; and the fact that for some reason I didn't want to tell my wife about what I was doing.

I think the ATM might be simpler than I originally thought. Perhaps the anxiety I felt with respect to asking people for directions is foreshadowing the social prowess I experienced later in the dream.

Not telling my wife though... In the past, especially when we were younger (teenagers), she's given me a though time whenever I preferred spending time with my friends rather than with her. But is this the whole of it? Could it maybe also represent some sort of desire for psychological independence (e.g. fear of interrupting a transformative experience by anchoring myself in the known)? That could be, especially since I don't have aversion to telling her at some point, it's just right now that's the problem.

Anyway... Something else that comes to mind when re-reading this dream is this quote by Joseph Campbell (I think it was from him at least).

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."