It’s a late Thursday night and you’re on Instagram, going through the profiles of people you used to talk to. As you reminisce, you come across your ex-boyfriend. “Wow, he’s changed so much,” you think to yourself. You then decide to search through your chat with him on Snapchat. Many photos and chats were saved from when you two used to talk to each other. You begin looking through those.
Suddenly, he’s standing right in front of you, and you ask the question that’s burning through your heart. “Why did you leave me?”. He just stares at you silently with tears in his eyes. He moves quickly, and you feel a sense of warmth and comfort—he hugs you. You haven’t felt his arms wrap around like this in ages; it feels like you’re finally home. You guys decide to go somewhere to talk and sort everything out. You’re suddenly at a nearby view, sitting in his car, chatting for what feels like hours. You feel a sense of hope in your heart again. You close your eyes for a moment. “Maybe it will all work out this time. He’s finally changed,” you think to yourself. As look back up, you expect to see the white of his eyes—instead, you see the white of your bedroom ceiling. It was all a dream.
Why would you dream of something like this? Does it mean you still love him or could it mean something else? Psychologists over the years have been battling this unsolved question. Sigmund Freud thought that dreams represented the repressed thoughts of your unconscious; many others have since opposed his ideas. What we know for certain is that dreams mostly occur in the REM stage of sleep. Cleveland Clinic states, “You can dream at any stage of sleep, but your most vivid dreams typically occur in rapid eye movement sleep, or REM sleep. That’s the period of sleep when your brain is highly active, your eyes move rapidly behind your closed eyes and you have temporary loss of muscle tone” (Cleveland Clinic).
But, even though we sometimes may remember our dreams, our memory isn’t credible. I believe our warped perspectives may cause us to interpret our dreams in different ways. A dream means what you make it mean. If multiple people pass through the same scene in their sleep, it will likely hold a unique meaning for each. This is due to how we all have our own perspectives and experiences which shape how we view the world we live in. Going back to the example introduced in the first few paragraphs, the dream about being with your ex could mean many different things. It could mean that you still have hope that everything will work out. Or, perhaps, it can simply be your brain’s way of coping to help you move on. What our brains like to do in sleep is process and process. Our neurons could simply be firing as they sort through heaps of information, and the dream may just be the manifestation of that.
In essence, I firmly hold that we can create meaning out of anything in our lives. Even though dreams may simply be our brains trying to understand everything that we did throughout the day, they could mean something deeper to us. We can take whatever meaning we want to take out of them. This can prove to be a healthy way to move forward through your life. They afford you the time to think about everything, so that, when you wake up, you’ve hopefully considered the solutions to many of your troubles.
The main point I urge you to grasp is that almost everything in life is what we make it—especially what goes on in our heads. Our perspectives mean everything because they shape how we react to certain events or dreams. Without meaning, I don’t think I’d be the only one to feel purposeless. Many of us live to generate meaning in all that we do. In and of itself, life doesn’t come with some innate meaning. If it did, I think we’d all be pre-destined to the careers and lives that have been picked out for us. But, I find it liberating to believe that we can choose our own paths. The same idea applies to dreams. They have no meaning; they are merely a way to process information. But we hold the power to give them a meaning that benefits us. Use them to make the most out of your life, and reach any goals you have set for yourself. Dream it to become it!
MedConnect 