Dreaming of a strawberry : what can this symbol evoke?

What does not keep

Apples can be stored all winter, figs dried, walnuts kept a year. The strawberry bears none of this : it crushes, it moulds, it loses its taste in two days. No store is possible.

Dreams often use this figure for what cannot be set aside. A moment of happiness one cannot keep for later, an opportunity that does not postpone, a season of life that will not return identical. It is not a threat : it is a characteristic.

The question it poses is concrete : what at the moment is ripe and will not stay so long? Those who dream of fragile fruit often have the habit of postponing everything to a more suitable time.

Seeds on the outside

Almost all fruits protect their seeds inside, behind the flesh. The strawberry does the opposite : what must reproduce is exposed, visible, at the surface — and that is precisely what lets birds disperse them.

Dreams sometimes use this peculiarity for what in you is at once fragile and shown. A sensitive part nothing covers, a capacity seen at once, a vulnerability that happens also to be what is transmitted.

What to remember is the fruit's state. Intact, it holds ; crushed, it stains everything it touches — and dreams often show the stain rather than the fruit.

What the fruit shows changes the reading

• A perfectly ripe strawberry — something arrived at the right moment, which will not stay so.
• Spoiled fruit at the bottom of the basket — what one wanted to keep and which did not keep.
• Seeds visible at the surface — what in you is at once fragile and exposed.
• A stain that will not come out — the trace of a crushed fruit, disproportionate to its size.
• Picking and eating on the spot — the only use that suits this fruit, which the dream stresses.
• A strawberry out of season — something obtained at the wrong moment, without the expected taste.

A psychological reading, not a ready-made box

Depth psychology takes an interest in images of short duration because they describe a relation to time consciousness organises badly : we reason in stores, and some things bear none. It notes that such dreams often accompany people who postpone. Other readings retain the arrangement of the seeds, exposed instead of protected, and the gap it installs with other fruits.