Dreaming

   Like everyone, I dream. I'm not talking about the dreams we formulate for ourselves in our waking hours, I'm talking about the things that come and visit  when the subconscious takes over.
   I tend to be able to remember most of my dreams and I seem to dream every night. I have had most of the textbook dreams. I cannot tell you how many times I've walked naked down my high school's second floor hallways , all the times I was trying to cross the railway tracks in agonizing slow motion as the train bore down on me, the many instances when my part in the play was about to happen onstage and I hadn't even read the script yet. Getting chased by the gorilla and trying to evade the men who want to kill me.
   I have also had gloriously wonderful dreams; somehow or other I can skate like the wind and I have to whole arena to myself, the times I am able to will myself to fly, and beautiful women surrendering themselves to me.
   Most of these dreams evoke very strong emotion. I can wake up frightened and gasping or wonderfully refreshed and happy and wanting badly to get back into that dream I was just having.
   The emotions were real, even if the events that provoked them happened only in my head.
   Here's my point. Is what you experience in a dream any less valid than what you experience in the waking world? If, in your dream, you experienced pain, joy, disappointment, fear, exhilaration, or confusion and you awoke embroiled within any or all of these feelings then is that not just as real an experience? If you awoke and your heart was racing with emotion is that not real?

   We tend to use the waking events of our lives as learning experiences and building blocks, whether we realize it or not. If, as the result of a dream, you are able to come to some sort of understanding of something you previously were confused about is this not just as valid a learning experience? If a dream makes you stop and say to yourself "holy crap, so that's how I really feel " then it is as real as anything happening in the conscious world.
   We all have things that have happened in our lives that we deeply regret and would like to have back. In my long list of things a couple of dreams are included--dreams I desperately wished I hadn't had. In spite of the fact that they were just dreams, they have had as profound an impact on me as if they'd been actual events in my life. To me, they were very real. Part of the impact is that I have never sat down and had any of my dreams analyzed. So I think the worst. Consciously, I know that many of us have unsettling dreams that are of little consequence, dreams that an expert would describe as commonplace and natural and not to be fretted over. But until I talk to this expert, my dreams are open to my own interpretation and this is sometimes scary, regardless of the fact that dreams can't make me be a certain way or do certain things I wouldn't do normally.
   The mind is a powerful thing and we know very little about its capabilities. When we sleep, it takes over. My dreams are often populated by people I have never met. They are so crystal-clear in their individuality that it is almost like I am walking down a street somewhere and being passed by strangers. I have no idea why they have appeared to me or if they somehow figure into my life. They do not play huge parts in my dreams the same way the strangers on the street do not play significant roles in my waking life. So I wonder why they are there and what their purpose is. Eerily, I wonder if there strangers out there who have me appear in their dreams...
   I'm headed off to bed soon and I have no idea what's in store for me after I drift off. I would not wish to be dreamless tonight or most any other night, it is fine with me if dreams come. As a matter of fact, it is late in the evening now and I did drift off as I was writing. Out of nowhere, I was with my Dad and we were rummaging around in his apartment, trying to pack his bags for a flight. This was about as far as the dream went before I woke up again.
   It was a very brief, odd little dream but I know exactly where it came from. My Dad will be taking a flight soon, we will be taking his ashes to the west coast in order to fulfill his request that they be scattered in the ocean there. I had not even been thinking of him when I dozed off. Given what lttle we know of the brain and dreaming, perhaps he was thinking about me.