again. I commonly dream about school, I guess because school had dictated my life for so long. When I miss class in these dreams, I don't miss one class. I discover I had some class all along, and I have missed all classes so far.

What a silly fear, obviously. In the waking world I would never fully and repeatedly forget an entire class. However, the dream world doesn't have to make sense. In fact, it rarely does.

Whether or not they come from a meaningful place, dreams mean a lot to me. They evoke emotions deeper than logic or words. This morning, I felt the profound fear of missing.

One time, a classmate confessed to waking up after the final exam. Another time, a coworker realized mid-lunch she had missed an important meeting. In the long term, those incidents didn't matter: the classmate made up the exam and the coworker caught up on the meeting after lunch. However, the vicarious experiences so significantly resonated with my fear of missing that I still remember them to this day.

The practical concern, as I see it, comes not from missing something. The practical concern lies with participating in that something at all. I would never forget an entire class; I would certainly choose whether or not to register for a class. Going forward, I would like to divert my fear of missing to a deliberation of participating.