When you're dreaming, are you alive? That question has always stuck with me because it got me wondering where we go when we're dreaming. I suppose technically we're still here, but we've gotten lost in our own minds. In most cases we can't control our dreams and are more or less just along for the ride that our subconscious has laid out in front of us. We have no control and it's essentially required reading. Our minds need to dream in order to function properly. There are a lot of theories on what our dreams mean or how they're constructed. It could be they're simply a mash-up of our conscious thoughts combined with those tiny thoughts that hide in the back of our minds. Together they are molded into some kind of narrative that we are able to understand. Well maybe not always understand, but at least recognize. Some people believe they have a handle on what specific images mean in dreams and maybe they're right, but all things mean something else to the individual. Animals in a dream may typically represent something for most people, but for someone with unique experiences regarding animals, it may mean something entirely different. Granted we all have unique experiences with anything in the world so then how can there ever be one set reference guide to what something in a dream means?
Notice that no matter how vivid your dream is, it tends to fade quickly once you're awake? It's almost like you're not supposed to bring it back with you to the conscious world. It was only meant for that time when you're asleep. There was a time when I tried to capture my dreams in a journal when I woke up, hoping to look back on them with eyes that were awake. The problem is that for me a lot of my dreams can't be relayed into words. They tend to be images shaped by thoughts and emotions and attempting to put them into words would be an exercise in futility. Plus not every night resulted in some seemingly cosmic journey through my deepest thoughts. Some nights were mundane, just like there are some days that pass by with little to look back on. So once again the dreams are only visible at night like fireflies.
Have you ever attempted to explain a dream to someone else? It's a lot like the problem with writing them down, there is so much lost in translation. You may get the basic plot out, but the impact it may have had could be lost if they don't share the same ties to the subject matter as you. There is a difference between reading about a tornado's destruction and living through one touching down near you. You can never fully share the whole experience with someone else unless they've been through it as well. So what's really going on when we're dreaming? Is our mind trying to tell us something? Are the thoughts of the day being sorted out after hours in a way that will make sense to us in the morning? If so then why do dreams seem to lead to more questions?
I mentioned how dreams fade, but there are a select few that stick with us for some reason. Life is made up of experiences that we carry with us. Some of them are good and some of them are bad. We carry them all with us, but we only consciously remember a handful in comparison to all the memories we have stashed in our mind. What's special about those experiences that we choose to remember? In some cases it seems like there is no choice at all. We simply remember it while other things get filed away, even if we'd prefer to keep them up front for easy access. I've talked about how perception shapes memory and what we remember may not always be exactly what happened. In the end it may not matter what exactly happened because we lack the ability to go back and verify one way or another. So we're left with only our memories to guide us through life, regardless of if they're accurate or not. If you were to try and classify experience it could be narrowed down to a few categories: real & factual, real & perceived, or manufactured. I'm simplifying of course, but ultimately the events in our life once they pass can be broken down into those groups. You can look back on yesterday and review the events of the day and say to yourself everything was real & factual. Next week, next month, or next year could you still say that? Somewhere along the way those memories get pushed aside to make room for new information. So what we once were so sure of as being real & factual get shifted into real & perceived without us even knowing it. There could eventually come a time when even that is called into question and we start to wonder if it was all just manufactured by our minds. If that can happen with so-called "real" memories then what's to say that the opposite couldn't be true? What started out as a manufactured experience eventually is regarded as something that was real. After a certain amount of time can our brain even tell the difference anymore? In a sense the dream becomes reality.
There is another kind of dream though. It's not the kind that we only experience when we're asleep. It's the hope we have for ourselves. It's something we wish for, even if it's not achievable. In some causes those kinds of dreams can haunt us long after we originally thought of them. They can be the driving force for some people's lives, which could be a good thing. Once someone looked up at the sky and wished they could fly. Instead of just accepting that it was a dream, they went on a mission to make it a reality. It just shows how powerful our minds can be when a simple idea alters the world around us. The sad part about these kinds of dreams is that they too can fade given the right circumstances. Dreams, like memories, can get lost in the shuffle. A child can dream of becoming an astronaut and eventually forget that the dream was ever there. Instead it's been replaced with something else. Maybe something that seems more achievable or less whimsical. Not ever dream can be realized, in fact most probably don't. Reality takes precedent over those fleeting thoughts. If a person created the means for people to fly based on a dream then what's to say that our dreams can't also shape reality? Maybe the limit is only there because we put it there.
