Once in a while you have one of those dreams that sticks with you after you wake up, moves you, speaks to you, but in ways you don’t understand upon waking. I had such a dream New Year’s morning. And the first thing I did was to write it down, or at least as much as I remembered:

I have prepared a presentation in a college course. But the professor decides not to use it, despite the work I’ve put into it. And no one seems to care.

Now I have prepared another presentation in the same course. I’ve put even more work into this one: researched my subject completely, prepared overhead slides, the works. Anxiety grips me, whether the professor and the rest of the class will receive my presentation well, or whether they will hate it, because I’ve never before given a presentation quite like this. But I remind myself that it’s better to try new things, to do what I haven’t succeeded at before, to expand my horizons, even if I ultimately fail at this attempt, because this is how I grow as a human being.

I leave class to double-check the overhead computer setup. I return just in time to give my presentation. But instead of calling on me, the professor announces another student, who is to give a presentation related to mine. That’s a mistake, however, because he’s already given his presentation, which the professor realizes as he walks up to the podium. He steps down off the dais and returns to his seat, and the professor calls another student to go.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering when my turn is going to come. It was supposed to be now. But maybe the professor just got his schedule confused. Maybe I’ll go next.

Now I am facing the student who had given the related presentation. I am sitting in his part of the lecture hall, in the seat in front of him, looking back across the table at him. He explains to me that I don’t have to give my presentation anymore, because he already gave his. Angry, I tell him that I do have to, because of all the work I’ve put into it. He tells me that it’s much better this way, because now I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll be any good.

My anger turns to rage. I yell at him that I need to give this presentation, because of all the work I put into it. He still doesn’t understand. I’m screaming now, that the professor was unfair, that the whole class must hear my presentation, because it has to make a difference.

I realize that this presentation is part of my search for meaning in my life, that it is something I haven’t done before and I’m nervous about; therefore, it will cause me to grow.

I repeat to my classmate, “It has to make a difference!”

By now, the whole class has noticed my behavior, and they are all cheering at me.

On March 28, at about 5 PM, 9-year-old Sarafina, probably in tears, talked to the 911, while her 23-year-old brother was stabbing her two sisters with a kitchen knife.

When police arrived, less than a minute later, he was decapitating 5-year-old Bianca, the youngest of the family, while Bianca’s uneaten birthday cake still lay on the kitchen table. Then he turned on little Sarafina herself, stabbing her several times before police could put an end to his rampage, shooting him dead right in front of her.

Happy birthday, Sarafina.

She was taken to the hospital and eventually recovered from her physical wounds.

My brother was one of the paramedics who witnessed the aftermath and carried her out to the ambulance.

One of the most persistent misconceptions regarding dreams is that they represent wishes. This notion was first popularized by Freud, and since then, it has stuck to the pop culture like Super Glue. Every one of us has at one time or another dreamed of a romantic encounter with some partner other than his spouse. And every one of us has been afraid to share that dream, lest she get the wrong idea.

But dreams do not, as Freud supposed, represent wishes. Rather, as recent research has suggested, dreams represent unfulfilled emotional expectations. That is, during the day we expected to feel a certain way, to have a certain emotional experience, and we didn’t. Someone did something or some event occurred to emotionally arouse us, but we never acted on that emotional arousal. In the meantime, our brains are geared up for the feelings that would have resulted had we acted on our feelings. Dreams are the result, dreams about those feelings, but not about the same people and events that caused the feelings.

This is called the Expectation Fulfillment Theory of Dreaming, first published in 1993 by psychologist Joe Griffin, who first stated the theory. Since then, the theory has gained support, as more research has borne out its conclusions and predictions. Since I’ve been keeping track, in my own informal research, it has also consistently explained my own dreams.