"Recognition"

Amazing the stuff that goes on inside your head and you don't even know it's there. Where DO our dreams come from I wonder? I can understand why people get so fascinated by them and ponder their 'hidden meaning', although my grandad used to insist that they were merely a result of eating too much cheese too late in the evening. "What? Is that Cheddar?!?" was his response to a whole range of big unanswered questions about life.

Last night I dreamed that I was back at work in the brewery and we were having a big sales conference in a hotel. Hundreds of staff were clustered in the hall for the 'Celebration Party' and during the evening the Managing Director (somehow a 'composite' of three of my former bosses) stood to make the 'special anouncement'

"Tonight I'd like to recognise the talent and efforts of someone who gives so much of himself to this business. Really, without his legendary skills with numbers and his understanding of the beer market I don't know how this company would even survive. You all know who I'm talking about! Iain - please step up to accept this large, expensive magnum of champagne in recognition of our respect!!!"

I make my way across the room surrounded by the applauding crowd. But, this being a dream, the inevitable doubt crosses my mind. Is it REALLY OK to go onto the stage like this, just wearing my dark blue underpants ...? Maybe I should tie a napkin around my waist too, like a loin-cloth? And yet nobody seems concerned eh?

Now what was odd about this dream for me wasn't my virtual nudity, which is rather understandable with the current heat and humidity, but this business of 'recognition'. No one ever gave me 'recognition' like that in my whole career, to get that kind of champagne treatment you had to make a very visible 'big production' of being an early starter and a late finisher and of having no interest at all in your family or personal life. And that was never me. Could I really get so excited about our brand of low calorie lager leaping forward to capture seventh place in the market category in the East Midlands? "Are we ready for the 'big push'? We'll be in Leicester by Christmas!"

And yet ... and yet! We all feel motivated by praise eh? Feel a sense of being valued, even when the penny finally drops and we realise at last that we don't need somebody else to tell us our 'value' and that our true worth is in fact 'beyond price' and always has been.

So maybe this dream was more about me awarding a bottle of champagne to myself. 'Paid work' and 'careers' are a hard thing to put down and move on from and it's a subtle process. So it's never too early to start to learn the obvious truth that you aren't the job that you do. Give yourself a pat on the back anyway.