... that recurring dream

A passage from the book "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space" by Carl Sagan

"When I was a child, my most exultant dreams were about flying — not in some machine, but all by myself. I would be skipping or hopping, and slowly I could pull my trajectory higher. It would take longer to fall back to the ground. Soon I would be on such a high arc that I wouldn’t come down at all. I would alight like a gargoyle in a niche near the pinnacle of a skyscraper, or gently settle down on a cloud. In the dream — which I must have had in its many variations at least a hundred times — achieving flight required a certain cast of mind. It’s impossible to describe it in words, but I can remember what it was like to this day. You did something inside your head and at the pit of your stomach, and then you could lift yourself up by an effort of will alone, your limbs hanging limply. Off you’d soar. I know many people have had similar dreams. Maybe most people. Maybe everyone. Perhaps it goes back 10 million years or more when our ancestors were gracefully flinging themselves from branch to branch in the primeval forest."

Ah, finally an explanation of a recurring dream that I been having since early childhood. It seems that this dream is not that uncommon. Perhaps as Sagan says, it is part of our collective memory.