Call me a fish philosopher, but I believe that when we enter dreams, we enter a dimension that runs precisely parallel to the one we wake up to every day. It's not always the same dimension, but it's any one but this one. I spend a lot of time thinking about such things, and honestly, since dreams are a difficult thing to study, there's little evidence against any crack theory. Who's to say our consciousness does not enter into some other world or existence while it's not in this one? Sure, in the end, this is the existence it comes back to, because this is the one to which it is assigned...which offers a fair explanation as to why you can't quite do everything in dreams that you can do in the real world. I really wish i'd forget that when faced with a serial killer or some zombies.
I, for one, am usually pretty good at remembering bits and pieces of my dreams...which tend to be epics. They say you only remember about 10% of your dream, so to put mine into perspective can be done easily by saying I can sometimes write several paragraphs about dreams I've just had. Even if I can't remember a dream, the feeling is still there. All of a sudden I'll be thinking about someone I haven't seen in months, or I'll be feeling particularly close to someone. One of the most awkward feelings in the world was having a dream where I had sex with a hot girl at school, only to go into school the next morning and realize she still had no idea I existed. I've always wanted to write a song ambitiously titled "If Only You Knew What I Did to You Last Night."
Perhaps more deeply lamentable however, are the dreams that are much more subtle about these kinds of people, putting you into friendship, or even worse, contact at all. I had a dream the other night about a girl I haven't talked to since high school ended, and in fact she unceremoniously un-friended me on facebook that fall, even though I'd done nothing wrong. In the dream, we weren't friends. In fact, she was a total jerk in the beginning. By the end, I think, I showed some sort of fortitude and I think we became amicable again, which was cool. I woke up and discovered we hadn't talked at all though, and realizing you're back at square one after a golden opportunity is a bit of a downer. You want something that simple to be true. The dreams where I'm a girl or whatever are negligible because I can accept that the events of the dream were in a ver far flung parallel universe. Granted, those are the ones I'd like to be in most.
Dreams tend to be very interesting versions of our world, where we are presented with a unique set of challenges that couldn't occur normally. The girl in my dream isn't likely to appear anywhere near me at the present time, so there's no way of knowing how she'd actually act today. Even if she were like she was in the dream, I'd find it way more interesting than a normal trip to a restaurant. In this way, even bad dreams are sometimes preferable to the real world, simply because they introduce a person or situation from your past or present that wouldn't occur to you normally. All of a sudden you wake up and you miss someone. You've shared an experience with them that they know nothing about. That's the sad truth of it. Personally, I'd love to know every single time I appear in someone's dream. I want to know if fate or whatever is trying to bring people to me, or that there is a parallel universe or dimension that lines up with one I've visited in a dream. It's kind of funny how even though I'd love to hear about them, I don't always do the same for others.
That being said, why aren't dreams a selling point? Why can't they be used as proof that things in the real world should happen? As I see it, dreams are small side stories in the grand adventure of someone's life. One of the reasons they can potentially happen is to remind you of things that you haven't forgotten. When a friend of mine died almost three years ago, I couldn't wait to get to sleep so that I might see her face one more time, or be reminded of how her voice sounded. In that case, a dream can console you by letting you know that in some other continuity, things were just a little bit different. When you wake up from those dreams, it's bittersweet. You know that you're back in a place where that person no longer exists, yet you know that somewhere, at least in your mind and memory, that person is okay. It's comforting to be reminded every once in a while.
This begs the question "Why then, do we not go visit the people in our dreams who still exist in this world?" And to that I have no idea. I think dreams should be the perfect things to bring people together, and I encourage acting on them. Now, I don't imagine a dream could take me to Canada or England to allow me to meet with people I've dreamt about, but it's certainly a reason to talk to pursue talking to them again, and perhaps bring a meeting into consideration again. In some universe, things are different, why not this one? I think that it's because I'm simply too afraid or lazy to confront someone that those subtle little dreams are so depressing. In that other dimension, the meeting was arranged for me. In this one, such a thing would take more bravery and effort.
Perhaps someday I will make more concerted efforts to blend all of the dimensions I visit. While things may look vastly different from their counterparts in this dimension...and believe me, plenty of things do not look anything like their real life versions yet still scream someone's name (perhaps this is the form of their soul or essence?), the people are something that remain a constant. I cannot transform buildings from their real world selves to the ones I see in my dreams, but I can try and put the people in front of me. I think every now and then, dreams are created by the fires of adventure I like so much. Yeah, maybe some of them are challenges "go find this person!" or "today try overcoming this fear!". Okay, so the latter one is less likely to be an adventure I take, but my point gets across, I think.
Dreams are stories we both make and are told at the same time. They are stories that we are given even less control over than in the story of our real life. Though not "real" per se, they are interesting, often challenging our beliefs and the laws of our existence, and thus they can have value. Besides, they're just fun. They're a nice chance to tell stories you normally wouldn't get to, and they certainly give us something or someone to think about. All that being said, I'm headed off into that different world now, since I'm writing this fairly late at night. I wonder if I'll be given any challenges tonight, and what kind of world I may be sent to...sleeping should not be this exciting.
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