Dream Theme: Expansive Thinking about Arrows

"Up" by Life Without Taffy

At the end of my sleep the other night, I had a discussion in a dream about symbols. I was talking with a faceless young man, and I think we were designing a website or a flyer or a sign. It needed something to convey a message, and I suggested an arrow. He scoffed, “I hate arrows!” The dreaming me responded, “But, I love arrows...” a sentiment that was news to the conscious me, as I watched the conversation fade to black on the insides of my opening eyelids.

I love arrows, eh? Fascinating. I never knew that about myself.

My dreams usually seem to be a means of working through subconscious desires and worries. I decided to take a stab at figuring out why dreaming me was so passionate about arrows, so I started a small research project. As I followed the natural path of information, I found a wealth of unexpected, fascinating, and diverse facts, stories, and electronic media.

And now, I have Four Reasons I Might Love Arrows:

1. An arrow is likely one of the first things I, and all of humanity for that matter, learned to draw. According to Symbols.com, the arrow is one of the most ancient ideograms. Some of the first human artists created art found in France’s Lascaux cave, where arrow-shaped geometric signs are intermingled with depictions of animals and humans. Perhaps the arrow is hard-coded into my human psyche?
2. For roughly eight years of my childhood, my family lived in a town called Navajo, within the bounds of a Native American reservation. Arrowheads are an often-found artifact of ancient Native American tribes, and the well-known Pueblo Alto Side Notched style of arrowhead was likely made by Navajo hunters or craftsmen. When conscious me thinks about an arrowhead, memories of Navajo rise to the surface.
3. As UXMatters.com explains, arrows convey an infinite number of messages. In the Unicode language, which is based on finite paramaters, there are dozens of ways to create arrows, as shown in this Wikipedia chart. Each of those arrows has a unique meaning, and to understand them all would require another research project entirely. Perhaps part of my love for arrows lies in their versatility of shape and meaning?
4. Ares, the Greek warrior god, is represented in some forms of communication by an arrow paired with a circle - a simplified spear and helmet. In the canon of Roman gods, Ares is called Mars. According to modern western astrology, Mars is the planet of passion, and it’s been wreaking havoc in my astrological sign, Virgo, since January. Astrology provides me with nothing more than amusement, but I couldn’t help raising an eyebrow when I read what DailyHorscope.com had to say.

Dreams have meaning, but whether their messages need to be fully sussed out isn't clear to me. In the case of the arrow, dreaming me succeeded at convincing conscious me to wander through a disconnected collection of facts without feeling lost - to think expansively about how they might be interrelated. I haven't figured out how the facts I discovered are relevant to my waking life, and I'm fine with waiting awhile to see if anything I've learned is at all useful. And even if none of it is, I had fun. Thanks for a good time, dreaming me.