Search Searched Searching
Usually indicates an attempt to find something or someone. Maybe you are looking for a past way of life – like wanting to have childhood with its lack of responsibilities. Or perhaps you search for a lover, even from the past.
Some searching is about your attempts to find an answer to a pressing problem, a search for your identity or meaning in a particular setting.
It may of course be that you feel you have lost something – youth, sexual appeal, creativity, or motivation.
Example: She says, ‘I am walking with another girl (Who seems to be a shadowy replica of myself) outside the studio. Some young men who also work at the studio are following behind us, calling out to us and joking. I say to the girl, “If they ask us to have a drink with them when we pass this public house we will accept, but if they don’t, we’ll just keep walking.”
The young men, however, do not ask us to join them. The girl turns back, but I keep on walking. I go down a subway station at Chancery Lane (near where I work) with the intention of going to Oxford Street. (Oxford Street symbolises Life to me.) I board a tube train. It is quite crowded with young girls, who look rather like myself. Suddenly, a charming, softly spoken woman of about mid-thirty (my age in fact) appears and tells us that we are all required to take part in a film. In fact, we have no choice, as our carriage is being driven off to a huge building. We are all ushered into a large room. There is a rather unpleasant man who seems to be the director. In the middle of the room is an enormous iron wheel, and on the end of each spoke is an iron chair, into which, one by one the “victims” from the train are being clamped by iron bands around the arms and throat. I get a distinct feeling of fear and distrust in spite of the charming woman’s efforts to reassure me. She says, “You will be released when the film is shot.” I do not believe her, and look around for some means of escape.
Meanwhile, my turn to be clamped into the chair is coming very close. The other girls seem to give no feeling of fear, they are submitting to the ordeal like sheep going to the slaughter. I am still aware that in the background the sadistic man is gloating about the whole thing. I make a frantic dash to the doorway. Outside there are tunnels leading in every direction. I run down one only to find the end is blocked by an iron gate, through which, grinning at me maliciously, is a ticket collector. I turn and run down another tunnel and suddenly find myself running along the top of the train in which I had arrived. It is stationary. I peer down when I see a group of young people walking along a street which is parallel to the train. They are dressed in “trendy” clothes, but their eyes are devoid of any expression and their gestures are mechanical. They are walking straight into a cul-de-sac. I decide not to join them; and turn to look the other way. A group of young children and some adults are playing in the street, yet everything is silent and dim. A man is leering at them. The buildings all around are high, dark and poor looking. I manage to bypass them all and find myself looking at a beach scene. Groups of people are sunbathing and playing on the beach. Yet again I am struck by the lifeless and mechanical actions and their expressionless eyes, as if they are living yet dead. I suddenly get a glimpse of the sea beyond them. It is beautiful, alive, moving, a translucent emerald green. The sun is sparkling on it. It is the only alive thing I have seen on my travels. I long to get to it. I will get to it, and drown myself in its purity and beauty. I start to make my way towards it when sand dunes build up before me, making the journey difficult. The sand slips under my feet, but I struggle on. Suddenly, out of the crowd, a matronly woman comes after me, trying to drag me back, saying, “You shall not escape.” I feel anything is better than living like the “puppet-like” people on the beach, and I make a frantic effort to escape her clutches and break away and enter the sea, quite happy to know I will die there.’
The dream beautifully illustrates a person searching for meaning and a life that is an expression of her own real self, not simply living out of social rituals and programming. The sea in dreams often represents the core of life within you. See Core – looking
Idioms: Searched high and low; a searching look; search me.