Dreams

While I’m waiting for my most anticipated movie of this summer – Inception, a movie about ‘dream’ directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo Dicarpio, I also feel like talking about ‘dream’.

Recently, my sleeping quality has not been too good. Usually, I function quite well with 7 hours of sleep. That means I wouldn’t need any caffeine, nor yawn throughout the day. However, in spite of 7 hours of sleep per night that I have recently, I felt tired and sleepy during the day. I think that’s related to the fact that I’m lacking exercise in recent months, perhaps squeezing some minutes to do some brief workout as part of my daily routine would help my sleep.

Anyway, my poor quality sleep also has a side effect; it is that my dreams lately have been getting a bit too vivid that I got a bit tired after I wake up. That had happened before, so I know that I will get over it, so I’m not too worried about it.

In contrast to others, I enjoy having dream in my course of sleep; usually I don’t get tired at all. Rather, having dreams in my sleep proves that I sleep well. Most of the time, I wouldn’t remember exactly what I’ve dreamed the night before, but I usually would subconsciously know whether I’ve dreamed or not. Having dreams make me feel like I’ve a lengthy sleep. Otherwise, I would feel like the whole night went by in a snap, which makes me feel tired and unfulfilling.

I’m not sure if I’ve blogged before that most of my dreams are very graphic with unrealistic content. That’s why there is just no way my dreams would ever come true, cuz, they just won’t. Like I would dream of a weird combination of people (such as celebrities and my old friends) together at a place doing things that they just won’t do that together.

Sometimes, I would be in my dream as one of the character that I would see myself from the prospective of a third person, like watching a video with me in it. But most of the time, I would be there in first person.

The way I realized that I have multiple dreams is that I subconsciously see that the people as well as the environment in my dream changes, e.g. being in a forest with few people and somehow shifts to be in a classroom or something.

I had experienced before the case of ‘a dream within a dream.’ It is like myself doing something in my dream and got really scare or worried, but somehow I told myself in my mind that it was only a dream, then I realized in my dream that what I had done was just a dream. It sounds complicated, but it was a fascinated experience.

There are funny things that I found interesting about my dream: ‘the shift of place’ and ‘emergence of new people’ in my dream. That happened before after I move to a new place, like being abroad in real life; I would start having dreams with the new place as background and even start speaking different languages. Also, after getting to know new friends or colleagues a short while, they started to appear in my dreams as well.

What I don’t like to dream the most is not nightmare, but dreaming about coworkers. Not that I hate them by any mean, but see them in my dream and then see them for real in few hours afterwards just make me tired. Usually, when that happens, it means that I would need to take time off from work in real life.

I don’t mind nightmare, like being in dangerous situations, cuz I always feel relax after waking up. That was a good feeling.

Only in very rare occasions that I would be able to continue good dreams after being waken up for some reasons. In most cases, I just move to another dream.

I like to see old faces in my dreams, namely people that I would rarely or never be able to see in real life again, like old school friends or relatives that have passed away. Dreaming about them, usually seeing them doing just some normal day-to-day things are very comforting.

I do believe that dreams and reality do have some connections. Every now and then, I would dream about something or someone in some places that I might have just acquainted in my waking hours not too long ago. Like saw a photo of someone on a magazine, listened a song on my iPhone, or things like that during the day, those acquaintances somehow would sneak into my dream that night.

Nonetheless, though I believe that there is dream-and-reality connection, I don’t believe any of the current theory of dream interpretation. Like, dreaming of certain color, or animals, or incidents means X, Y and Z that is happening or will happen to me in real life. Cuz, I think dream interpretation is really personal. Like dreaming of coworkers for me means I may be stressful at works that I need to take time off. However, that may not apply to other people. In terms of color, objects, etc, those things are also subjective to culture and personal preference/experience. That’s why I think that those dream-interpretation books are jokes, for leisure only.

As I said, I enjoy my dreaming experience. I used to think that if we can control what to dream, that would be the best thing happen in life. Cuz, sleeping is supposed to occupy about a third of our life. Imagine you can control what to happen to you in about a third of your life. That would be fascinating, isn’t it? In particular, some of dreams were so vivid that I usually can’t tell if I was dreaming when I was in dreams. However, come to think of it, one great reason why I enjoy dreaming so much is its unpredictability that always comes with surprises. If I can control what to dream about, then that would be no surprise.

I think I’ve talked about dream enough, time to wake up and face the reality.