Age Aged Ageing Ageless

The age of characters, family, animals, objects or yourself in a dream often carry very definite associations or information. What these associations are depends a great deal on what age you are yourself.

Idioms: Act your age; age of consent; age before beauty; ages since; an age; at an advanced age; at an awkward age; come of age; ripe old age; show ones age; under age.

In general:

ageing; Moving toward death; a sense of inevitability; an identification with the body rather than with the process of life; passing of ones opportunities offered by the younger phases of your life, but the opening to a new relationship with life given by the new period.

ageless; Depicts the core of you that does not suffer from change; the spiritual aspect of your experience; the changeless core of self which has lived throughout time.

baby or child; Refers to your feelings of dependence or vulnerability, perhaps even helplessness or powerlessness; but often it suggests need for love, support and care; it may even represent actual memories of your own baby/child/hood. The bay or child also depict newness, new opportunity, a fresh approach. See: baby; youth.

extreme old age; Feelings about death; old way of life; some influence in yourself or surroundings that antedates your birth. Influences from ones family such as attitudes or fears may be generations old, and so be depicted as incredibly ancient; often represents something holding a lot of wisdom or experience. One may therefore feel the person is holy or revered in such dreams.

middle aged person; represents achievement, maturity, the ageing process. The elderly person may depict feelings about ones parents or a parent/authority figure; the wisdom gathered from many years of living; the declining power or creativity, or the feelings of decline and loss within oneself. Such feelings are often simply cultural and are not a real reflection of what is possible or opportune at this time of life. It is a time when you have to create your own world and life more fully than in previous ‘ages’. See: individuation.

new object or thing; Something that is just appearing in your life, like a new romance or opportunity. But sometimes it represents something that is just a new idea, something that has not got any physical reality yet.

old fashioned; An old way of doing things; something established as compared with something new or emerging; something accepted socially; time tested but perhaps now out of date.

something or someone as old as yourself; Usually refers to yourself in some way. Dreams often include houses which were built about the period of ones birth, and so refer to ones own lifetime and what has become of you. Thus an object the same age as yourself would depict some aspect of your life, depending on the object.

teenager; often points to whatever difficulties you faced, or are facing, in the process of meeting sexual drives, adult relationships, and the need to become an independent and motivated part of society. Thus there may be feelings of uncertainty, shyness, inexperience or idealism suggested in the dream teenager.

very old thing; Either an early part of ones lifetime, such as babyhood, or something that happened in the past and because you have changed so radically, appears to be a very long time ago; or refers to things that influence you which are from a time before your own birth. We are all influenced by the culture we live in for instance, and that is very ancient. But could also be a family trait, or even an influence or vitalising motivation with which one was born, and which appears to have arisen from a

distant past; something that represent wisdom or deep experience. This wisdom is usually not yet defined. It needs to be made conscious by exploring the symbol. This can be revelatory in that we become aware of massive information gathered but never before made conscious.

young adult; Yourself at your physical peak; yourself at that age; that period of your life; the period of worldly opportunity.

If one is a child or youth: most adult figures would suggest either a parent or authority figure; the possibilities of ones own maturity; a role model, or a target for admiration or sexual attraction; perhaps even some form of security in love and being cared for.

If you are already past mid-life: the younger people in your dream in general depict that period of your life and what was learned or experienced at that age. The different age groups also represent the opportunities commonly associated with that age. For instance a sixty year old women who falls in love might say ‘I feel like a young girl again.’ Or one might say to a young person, ‘You’ve got an old head on your shoulders.’ It is in precisely this way that dreams use age to represent feelings and situations.

Example: I dreamt I was on a garden with an old man, a young boy and a young man in his thirties. The plot of land had something of the feeling of an allotment. It was well tended, and I had the sense the young man had been doing most of the work on it. The soil was rich but at the moment dry. A few shoots were just breaking the ground from hundreds of bulbs which had just started shooting.

The old man was kneeling at the edge of one end of the oblong plot of land. He was digging up bulbs one at a time and looking at them, then putting them back in the soil again. As the soil was dry he had to dig the hole a bit bigger to get them back. The bulbs had good roots and the shoots were firm. I was agitated about the old man digging them up though, and felt he should let them be. This seemed to link with my own propensity to dig up seeds when I was younger, to see if they had germinated.

The young boy was simply watching and was quite shadowy. The younger man was getting on with whatever work he was doing. I spoke to him after leaving the old man. Henry G.

Henry, the dreamer is a man in his late fifties. He explored his dream and summarised what he realised as follows:

In connecting with the feelings in the dream the different aged males are all facets of myself. The old man is my own sense of ageing, and the feeling of dryness and being outside of the opportunities that I associate with those younger than myself. My feeling that nothing is growing in my life makes me want to dig under the surface of things to see if there are any new things that might arise. The younger man is the active and creative period of my life during which I did in fact ‘sow a lot of seeds’ which are now emerging into reality. The boy is my impatience but also the aspect of myself from which new ideas and directions can emerge.

He is that part of me which is still growing, like the bulbs. The garden is my soul/soil. It is all the work I have done to cultivate skills and attributes in myself and create things in the world. What is important is that even though I am in my fifties, these younger parts were skills and attributes I developed in the past and are still active in me today.

Example: Every night for the past six months at least, in my dream there is a baby. I seem to be neglecting the baby, i.e. I tell myself it is time I fed it or changed it etc., but the baby thrives in spite of my neglect. It is never the same baby – it looks different each time – but it seems quite content. Mrs. M. C.

Here the age of the baby reflects the level of feelings the dreamer is dealing with. The keyword is neglect. So Mrs. C. is being reminded by her dreams that she is neglecting either the needs arising from her own childhood emotional dependence or her need for warmth and love as a baby. The imagery of the dream suggest it is warmth and love she is not getting enough of, and most likely she didn’t get enough when she was actually a baby. That she is now a adult does not reduce the strength of her unfulfilled needs.

Example: I am in an unknown old building with unsafe floors. I vaguely feel it belongs to my long dead father. Around me are rats, which have young. I am hysterical because they keep multiplying. People with me, unknown, although my husband is there, I don’t seem to care about them. I usually wake shouting because one of the rats touches me. I am not frightened of rats when awake. Dorothy C.

The age of the building suggests there is some connection from a long time ago. The dream goes on to say the connection is with the long dead father. This is unclear because Dorothy has not yet made it conscious what the fear is that arose in herself from her relationship with her father.

Example: ‘I am packing for a holiday, surrounded by a lovely selection of all sorts of clothes. I am matching outfits, shoes, scarves, handbags to match. It gives me great pleasure. I am wearing an old navy blue dress which is too short for me. So short I feel panic because there will not be enough time to change. I am now on the top deck of a bus. I have one battered suitcase and am wearing the same dress, trying vainly to pull it down over my knees. Suitcase bursts open and it is full of old clothes fit for a jumble sale.’ Valerie H.

Example: From Dream Power by Ann Faraday page 163. I was being presented to a Persian king in the grounds of his palace. As we talked a group of happy, laughing young girls came into the garden, followed by a rather sad looking middle aged woman who I thought must be the King’s chief wife. This woman was obviously in charge of the harem and was sad, I felt, because the king no longer wanted her sexually and had relegated her to the role of household organiser. One of the girls came to Sally and said, ‘Don’t you recognise me? We were together in a previous incarnation’.

Ann Faraday’s comments on the dream are that she realised the king represented her husband, and she was the chief wife. This led her to realise that in the early years of their marriage there had been much joy in their sexual relationship. This had faded in the years preceding the dream, and they had grown apart sexually. The middle aged woman therefore represents her own sadness through feeling past her prime and unattractive. Such feelings do not mean she is actually unattractive, only that she feels she is.

See: age and dream; adolescent; baby; boy; girl; daughter; age and your dreams; ancient.

Idioms: Act your age; age of consent; age before beauty; ages since; an age; at an advanced age; at an awkward age; come of age; ripe old age; show ones age; under age.

Useful questions are:

What does the particular age represent to me?

Does this signify particular aspects of the age?

What were the main events or features of my life at that age?

Does this dream highlight special aspects of the thing or person. If so what are they?

Is there a difference between what I think about.

It might help if you use Processing Dreams.