We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when

The words of Doris Lessing, spoken with the quiet gravity of one who has contemplated the mysteries of the human soul, carry within them both tenderness and revelation: “We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.” In this single sentence, Lessing captures the eternal bond between parent and child — a bond that is not confined by time or circumstance, but that lives on in the depths of memory and longing. To compare our parents to recurring dreams is to say that they remain with us long after childhood has ended, shaping our thoughts, our instincts, our fears, and our hopes. They are the first voices we hear, the first faces we know, and even when they are gone, their essence lingers in the silent chambers of our being, waiting to be revisited whenever life calls upon their guidance or comfort.

Doris Lessing, the Nobel Prize-winning author whose works often explored human consciousness, identity, and the passage of generations, understood deeply the cyclical nature of memory. Her words reflect not only love, but the complexity of family — the way in which our parents dwell within us as symbols of both nurture and struggle. Just as a dream returns to us with different meanings at different times, so too do our memories of our parents evolve as we grow. The child who once feared or adored them becomes the adult who seeks to understand them, to forgive them, to learn from them anew. Thus, Lessing’s quote is not merely poetic; it is a truth of psychology and spirit: that our relationship with our parents never truly ends, but transforms, resurfacing at the moments when we most need to remember who we are.

In the metaphor of the recurring dream, there is a sacred rhythm — the way the past speaks to the present. A dream, like memory, does not obey time. It arrives when the soul calls for it, often without our knowing why. When Lessing says we “enter” our parents as we would a dream, she means that we reinhabit their presence within us — the lessons they taught, the gestures they made, the love they gave or withheld. Whether in joy or pain, we revisit those imprints when life demands their wisdom. When we face hardship, we may suddenly recall a parent’s resilience; when we make a moral choice, we might hear their voice guiding us; and when we falter, we may feel again their disappointment or their faith. Our parents, like dreams, become the mirrors through which we continually rediscover our own humanity.

This truth finds resonance in the ancient story of Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. For twenty years, he lived in his father’s shadow, guided only by the memory of the man he had never truly known. Yet it was this imagined Odysseus — this dream of his father — that gave him courage to seek truth and face the world. When at last father and son met, the reunion was not simply physical but spiritual: the dream and the man became one. In Telemachus’s journey, we see Lessing’s insight made flesh. The parents we remember are both real and imagined, both the living and the symbolic. We “enter” them in memory as Telemachus entered his father’s legacy, finding strength in that timeless connection between generations.

But Lessing’s words also carry a deeper melancholy — the understanding that the dream of our parents is not always comforting. Just as dreams may reveal our fears and unresolved emotions, so too do our memories of family hold contradictions. Some find in their parents the comfort of unconditional love; others, the weight of expectations or wounds unhealed. Yet even then, those memories have meaning. They remind us that growth often comes through reconciliation — that to revisit the “dream” is to make peace with it, to see our parents not as gods or villains, but as human beings like ourselves. In this way, their presence continues to guide us, not through perfection, but through truth.

And so, Lessing teaches us to honor the recurring dream, to return to it not with fear, but with gratitude. Each time we revisit our parents in thought or memory, we are not dwelling in the past, but drawing from a well of experience that shapes the future. To reflect upon them — to recall their laughter, their mistakes, their sacrifices — is to reconnect with the roots from which our own life has grown. Even if those roots were tangled or imperfect, they remain the foundation of our becoming. Through remembrance, we transform inheritance into wisdom.

Thus, the lesson of Doris Lessing’s quote is both tender and profound: we must not flee from the memories of those who raised us, nor let them fade into silence. Instead, we must learn to enter them consciously, as one enters a sacred dream, to find there the fragments of our own identity. Whether they live in flesh or only in memory, our parents dwell within us still — as symbols of love, endurance, and humanity itself. The wise do not forget their origins; they revisit them, understand them anew, and through that understanding, transcend them.

So, dear listener, remember this: when life confuses or burdens you, close your eyes and enter the dream — the dream of your beginnings, of those who first taught you to see and to feel. Find there not only the echo of their voices, but the mirror of your own heart. For in knowing where you came from, you will know more clearly where you must go. And thus, through memory, love, and forgiveness, the eternal dream of parent and child continues — not as a chain that binds, but as a light that guides across generations.