Why Ouroboros?

I dream a lot.

One early morning I had a series of three dreams when the same voice intruded on the events of each dream and said "Ouroboros".

It was insistent. I was being told something. And I'd better remember it.

I woke up remembering the event but not the word. Halfway through the following day I eventually retrieved it.

Ouroboros. It's an old idea about the eternal return. The constant and continuous recreation of something.

When I realised I needed to make a place on the innernet to record my thoughts on the profession of management in our post-GFC world I thought 'aha!'.

I'll call it ouroboros. Because this is where I go to put my thoughts down and in so doing perpetuate my thinking.

So I'll put more thoughts down and perpetuate more thinking. Etc etc.

Thoughts lead to more thoughts and dreams lead to more dreams.

I had another dream recently. This was a very realistic dream, in terms of the physics of the thing.

In the dream I was having a conversation with one of the inhabitants and I was telling this person that we were, in fact, in a dream.

This person took great pains to point out that the world was in fact quite consistent with reality. They were very logical and rational and pointed out to me in terms I could not refute that the dream was in fact reality.

All I could do was nod and insist that it was a dream. That, yes, they made a good point but it was still a dream. Although I could provide no proof that it was a dream.

But then the person's logic started to take effect. It became harder and harder for me to insist that what we were experiencing wasn't in fact reality.

My lame answers just weren't cutting it. Also the dream wasn't shifting. Sometimes when I question the physics of my dreams, they blend into something else.

Not this time. And slowly I started to believe this dream character. I started to admit that my belief about the state of the world were wrong.

So I did the only thing I could do: I woke myself up.

Which felt like cheating at the time. I spent the day musing on the parallels the dream had for life and my approach to it.

I came to recognise that this dream inhabitant had a lesson for me. I'm not sure what that lesson is yet but I'll keep thinking it through.

My main concern right now is I hope I don't come across them in another dream until I've got my answer straight.