Dreaming About a Neighbour

A neighbour holds an unusual position in waking life, and dreams make full use of it. Here is somebody living close enough to hear you, to whom you may never have spoken properly. The tradition reads the figure as precisely that: what is near, familiar and only half known. Where the dream neighbour has a real face, interpreters are careful; where the face cannot be placed, the image is generally taken as proximity itself rather than as anyone in particular.

Fences, walls and noise

The setting normally does the work in these dreams. A boundary between two houses, a fence being shifted, a wall going up or coming down, has long been attached to the question of where one life ends and another begins. Sound coming through a wall is read as something intruding that cannot be shut out, and a caller who will not leave the doorstep sits with the same idea. Being invited in is among the warmer images in this family, and readers connect it to a widening of the small circle a person actually trusts.

When it is somebody you know

Dreaming of a real neighbour happens often and is worth handling with care. A dream is not treated as information about another person, their intentions or their opinion of you, and there is nothing to be learned from it about anybody except yourself. What readers do point out is that sleep reaches for whatever faces are available, and someone you see three times a week without giving them a thought is about as available as a face gets. Their appearance may say nothing whatsoever about them.

Close, but not chosen

The centre of the symbol is that neighbours are not selected. Friends and partners are chosen, while the people on the other side of the wall simply arrive with the house. Interpreters have linked the figure to everything in a life that came with the situation rather than by decision, which is usually where the dream bites. Even so, what the word calls up for you decides most of it. A dreamer who grew up in a building where every door stood open has a different picture to work from than one whose last flat came with a long dispute over a shared drive.