A number of dreamers in Scotland have been sharing their dreams about impending fuel shortages. Due to a disagreement between the owners and the workforce, the refinery at Grangemouth will be closing for a two day strike.

When we dream about fuel, we are often dreaming about the source of our creativity and how our creative spirit can fuel our journeys of self exploration.  If that essence is in short supply, we may feel that our creative potential is being frustrated and our progress has come to standstill.

Although politicians have urged drivers not to panic buy, long queues have been forming at the pumps and some fuel stations are running dry.  While this may appear to media-fuelled mass hysteria, listening to the dreams gives a quite different perspective.

For the individual drivers and dreamers, filling up their fuel tanks is more of a silent protest at how a small group of people who should be serving them by refining and providing their creative inspiration have actually let them down.  However, in their dreams, the faces of the group who continue to disappoint and abandon them are not the refinery workers, but those of their political leadership.

In the Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, the official unit of currency is the Pound Sterling, also known colloquially as the ‘Quid’. Children’s author J.K. Rowling has accumulated hundreds of mllions of quids through the sale of her epically popular Harry Potter stories.

In creating the Harry Potter series, Joanne Rowling was heavily influenced by a number of other authors and their creative works.  These include Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, Lewis’s ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’, White’s ‘The Sword in the Stone’, Murphy’s ‘The Worst Witch’ and Ibbotson’s ‘The Secret of Platform 13′, to name but a few.

Joanne has borrowed motifs and fragments from all of these works and woven them into the adventures of Harry Potter, and is currently embroiled in a tense legal battle with mild mannered librarian Steve Vander Ark over his project to borrow her characters for his Harry Potter encyclopedia.

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Steve Denning  is now actively proposing Wisdom Management as a service.  This has been causing some controversy on the ActKM forum and with knowledge management experts such as Dave Snowden, Patrick Lambe and Matt Moore.

Wisdom often appears as a specific individual perspective that embodies a more archetypal significance.  It is also usually context dependent; a wise choice in one situation may be an unwise choice in another.

It will be interesting when Steve describes what would a Wisdom Manager’s role might involve, and how they might gather and disseminate appropriate wisdom.

Will a Wisdom Manager be like Mr Grimsdale advising Norman Pitkin how to dig up a road, or perhaps more like Norman himself influencing the direction of a chosen client group?

Perhaps Steve should look to Norman for some Wisdom in this situation and realise that if you are digging yourself into a hole, the wisest option is often to stop digging.

Recently I have been exploring many dreams about the Olympic Torch.  Although the Torch has featured in a number of contexts, the most familiar narrative is that the dreamer is running with the torch, and is being attacked by what seems to be an organised and aggressive group.  The attackers often seem to be dressed in military uniforms and shouting orders at the dreamer as they try to grab hold of the Torch.

When we dream of a flame, particularly a flaming torch, often represents our individual creativity and what fires us with excitiement.  It can also be a metaphor for what inflames our passions, as in the classic Torch Song where carrying a torch for someone is how we keep the light of an unrequited love aflame.

Ultimately the person we are carrying the torch for is often our own creative self and the unrequited love we experience is a perhaps a projection of our own unrequited creative talents.  The torch of our own creativity illuminates our path into the unknown and helps to enlighten us as we move forward on our journeys.

The creativity that ignites our passion and fires our imagination is usually sparked by boundless love, rather than ruthless control.  Creativity is an energy that cannot be enforced; it can only be encouraged.  Otherwise it becomes an abstracted and remote ideal that seems to become more distant the more we run towards it.

The emotional chaos in the latest incarnation of the Aird of Sleat* has been reflected in many dreams recently.  In waking life, the much heralded automatic baggage handling system  has resulted in the temporary disappearance of 19,000 items of luggage.  In dreaming life, dreamers have been reporting that they arrive in the baggage hall to collect their belongings, only to be embroiled in chaotic confusion.

When we dream of bags and baggage we are usually reflecting the experiences and habits that we carry around with us in our waking lives.  This emotional baggage is often no longer required and we are usually holding on to beliefs and feelings that no longer have any real value for us.  Rather than burden ourselves with the trauma of the past we can perhaps look at ways of lightening our emotional load,  so we can move forward on to the next part of our journeys.

It would seem from the experiences of passengers in Terminal 5 that British Airways perhaps need to unburden themselves of habitual working practices and chronic staff relations.  By lightening their own emotional baggage and habitual responses, they can perhaps ensure that their self-loading freight is always reconnected with the baggage that they consciously choose to carry.

*(AIRD OF SLEAT (n. archaic) Ancient Scottish curse placed from afar on the stretch of land now occupied by Heathrow Airport. – Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff)