Man Falling from the Building
The content contains dark themes, please use reader’s discretion.
Since I started working as a civil servant, I had many graphic, dramatic dreams. This is one of them.
Driving on a familiar road
The setting was pretty simple. My family was having an outing, with my father driving the car, and my mother, my sister and I were all on the car, which is exactly what we do in real life. The road we drove on, however, was another matter. It’s the road I walked every day to go the office, a place I associated with pressure and stress.
How on earth did we end up driving on this road? I had no idea. Then, it happened.
The men fell
We were moving in the car, about to turn and left the road. Suddenly, I heard a man screaming. Before I could make sense of it, something contacted on the roof of our car and had a loud bang. I immediately knew: It’s the man. He jumped off a building and fell on the car.
I was shocked. My father then yelled, “Don’t look!” I did what he said, ducking down. Part of me wanted to look, part of me was horrified by what I might see.
We drove on, and leaving the man behind. And I thought, “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
My interpretation of the dream
In the dream, the road was the one I used to go to work, which can represent the workplace. My family and I were all in the car made it feel intimate, which was the vibe from my workplace. My colleagues and I worked in a crowded office, everyone could hear everyone else’s voice. We chatted about work, and shared what’s going on with our life.
The falling man poked holes in the harmony, revealing how fragile the peace was. When working in the government, there were all kinds of strange logics to make things work the way higher-ups wanted. To avoid responsibility, to make things look pretty. I was uncomfortable to learn those things, letting alone being a cog actually doing them. The falling man could symbolize the shocked feeling I had then.
But my father—who could be my supervisors in real life—told me not to get a clear look of the falling man. Higher-ups work in the system for a long time, and they have gotten used to it. It’s merely something they have to get done, and there isn’t any hesitation. I remember when I asked my supervisor why certain cases were dropped, he said, “You don’t have to think much about it. The higher-ups have their decisions.”
Almost every time, we—my colleagues and I—obeyed them. We ignored the unreasonable parts, and did what we were told. We could only thought, “Shouldn’t we call the police?”
When the question got louder? It took time, but small rebellion sprouted, and eventually bloomed into the start of leaving the system all together.