For the past week, I’ve had several dreams involving rabbits. I try not to put much thought into dreams but with the same imagery showing up repeatedly, it’s hard not to at least consider whether my subconscious is telling me something.
In one, we had gone to a shelter to adopt a dog but were talked into taking home a large black rabbit. After I had fed it some lettuce, I returned to find it had shredded the lettuce and was wearing it like scalloped armor. When I brushed the lettuce armor off, the rabbit had changed from black to white.
In another, I had discovered a rabbit warren in the front bed and was trying to gather up all the little rabbits but they kept jumping out of the basket and returning to the warren every time I turned around. These rabbits were all light brown.
A third found me searching for cages so that I could adopt out the baby rabbits I’d found plus the baby-baby bunnies — tiny things with big anime eyes. I was putting two rabbits in each cage but there were many more rabbits than cages so I was looking for alternatives. Bunnies ranged from brown to white to spotted or speckled.
When I look up dream interpretation and rabbits, most of the standard interpretations are consistent: general good luck, overcoming obstacles, and fast thinking. Other interpretations speak to fear, change, and prosperity. Yet more interpretations, most of which rely on mythologies and legends, link rabbits to rebirth, self-sacrifice, persecution, fertility, and sexuality. In short, rabbits can indicate damned near anything.
Most interpretations ask the dreamer to consider the colour of the rabbit with white normally indicating good luck or positive outcomes and black the opposite.
I also know that from Alice in Wonderland to Donnie Darko, rabbits tend to act as dream guides, but these particular rabbits weren’t giving me any direction.
Sooooooo, what gives, brain?
If I look to what I think about before I drift off to sleep, lately it has mostly been a lot of writing ideas — story fragments and article or blog post subjects — and just general thoughts about how to better track, schedule, and complete all the many writing ideas and goals I have.
Even though the meaning here still seems inconclusive, I am choosing to interpret the rabbits in a positive light. The fact that there were multiple rabbits in two of the dreams and that in the first the rabbit changed from black to white — negative to positive — I believe that my subconscious is telling me I will be successful in my writing and prosper, assuming I can find enough cages (i.e. get it written).
Which means I should stop thinking about it and go get it done.