Status Seeking

Status Seeking

I had a very lucid kind of dream this morning, featuring an ex-boyfriend I would rather forget.

I have had this dream before, if you are into dream interpretation, you may have some fun with this:

I am in a coffee shop in a holiday town. I decide to buy a piece of their super expensive white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake for my mother, as it is apparently the stuff of legend. Notice that I have no intention of actually having any myself, as apparently this is important to the dream. A fight breaks out in the coffee shop as the punters are aware that I have a slice of it.

I then return to my job as a chef in a large and rather industrial kitchen, where I work for a head chef that has considerably less knowledge and experience than I do. Nevertheless I am aware of feeling quite happy as I dodge the Victorian pipes and other workers in the course of doing whatever it is that I am doing there.

After a lot of exploring the staff accomodation, which appears to be a rabbit warren, I come back to work and go through the wrong door into the public area, which is in the form of a bar. My ex, who was Raymond Blanc’s head chef many moons ago, is standing teaching a small crowd of rather daft looking people how to make sandwiches. He is waving his arms around and pretending that this is very complex, and of course with a French accent, it sounds rather more technical than putting cheese and lettuce between slices of pan bread.

He sees me, stops and then tries to belittle me. I am aware that he is jealous that I am allowed in the kitchen and he is not. This relates to reality, as when we were together he was jealous that I was getting better jobs than he was on the grounds that I was a)cheaper b)more flexible c)not famous d)unlikely to stab anyone.

To me, this dream is all about status. I have actively avoided status throughout my life. I like responsibility, but I have no interest in status. I am not sure why this is? I am very keen on seeking knowledge, I am happy to work to gain even small amounts of that, but status is not of interest.

Not only has this seriously affected my income, it has been rather sad in that I spend a lot of time thinking that people are not terribly competent. Competence certainly doesn’t relate to success, as far as I can see, at least not as much as wanting status really badly.

The cheesecake issue is about quality of care. My mother has no regard for my well-being, she has actually said as much, however she literally gets the best of everything, even whilst she complains about it. I tend to think this is her idea of having fun, since her life is rather limited. The fight in the coffee shop is people who would rather she did not have this care because they arent getting any. Therefore I think this part is me worrying about aging and how my life is going to end up as a result of caring for her.

The kitchen work element is about resolving this resistance to status, and wondering if knowledge acquisition really matters at this point in my life, since nobody is interested in knowledge anymore.

Rene turning up is likely to be about becoming a greedier and more forceful person, as Rene suffered from a kind of enforced narcissism as a result of his more genuinely narcissistic mother. I actually felt quite sorry for him even as he stamped all over my life for his own gain.

I do wonder if I have been chasing Wolfe for years because of this fear of status and willingness to drown in work for the joy of doing it. If it recovers my health, so much the better but I am a rather disruptive child when I want to know something.

I am thinking that Mrs Wolfe, the fictional character that I am creating, will not be complete by October and that I would be better to complete this project and write about it rather than bother to speak to him. To hell with the original book, nobody cares about the planet or their own welfare anyway, even the people that pretend that they do.