Dreams

Dreams are a great mystery. They come to us with images that can inspire or haunt us. They are the ephemeral hopes and desires one has. Dreams are soothing and terrifying. What does it mean to dream? Is it simply a biproduct of the biological processes that govern our natural world, or are dreams more akin to the spiritual? Can someone randomly dream of future events? Or is that dream simply our brain’s best guess at what’s to come? Do we get chaos or is there order to this naturally selected feature of our brains?

We know other animals dream, but what do they dream of? Footage of a sleeping cat pouncing on it’s imaginary prey in a science experiment comes to my mind. That cat was practicing something he would need for survival in the wild. So are our dreams just our way of practicing skills we need for everyday interactions with the world around us, or can we extrapolate more from these dreaming sessions? 

I believe humans dream of what they need and desire the same way the cat prepares for the hunt. I also believe we can find the answers to questions we have about ourselves and the inner workings of our mind. We humans dream of how to make the impossible possible. Our dreams can lead us to understanding or to confusion.

That’s why dreams are so mysterious. They lend strength to our imaginations which knows no bounds. So what are dreams exactly? Trying to pin down their meaning may be an exercise in futility, but it’s an exercise we all take part in, separately but together. That’s the nature of beauty.