Dreams (the ones we see while asleep) have always fascinated me. Wikipedia defines dreams as "Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep". I had read somewhere that if we maintain a dream journal, it can be interpreted to reveal hidden significance or even future. Sigmund Freud,
who developed the discipline of psychoanalysis, wrote extensively about
dream theories and interpretations. He explained dreams as
manifestations of our deepest desires and anxieties, often relating to
repressed childhood memories or obsessions.
Deta (my father) is a avid reader and has a interesting collection of books of diverse genres. In his collection he had books on interpretation of dreams. There was a time while I was home that the first thing I would do on getting up in the morning was to rush to his room and check out that particular book to interpret what my dream meant.
We
are not only less reasonable and less decent in our dreams... we are
also more intelligent, wiser and capable of better judgment when we are
asleep than when we are awake. ~Erich Fromm
My dreams had always been haphazard, never sequential. One moment something is happening and the next something else is happening. Just like everybody else I too mostly forget what I was dreaming about the moment I am awake. But there are certain things that I dream about repeatedly, like:
- Being back in school.Although the setting is my school, my fellow students are a mix from my school, colleges and university. Sometimes I am writing my exams and my pen stops working or I don't reach the hall on time and so on. Except my kinder-garden, I have done my entire schooling from a single school, that is eleven years. May be that's why I dream about it so much.
- The house that our family accommodated for two decades. Different dreams but the same house.
- Vomiting. Yes I know, that's gross but I do that a lot in my dreams. I am actually kind of sick of doing that over and over again.
Then there is one dream I distinctly remember. I was quite young and was suffering from high fever. I dreamed that I am inside some giant machine I am making my way risking my life through the giant clockworks and hammers. And if I miss a step, I could be crushed. May be I watched too many cartoons but that dream stayed with me.
I have grown up hearing what certain dreams meant from up grown-ups around me. Like if you see white things in your dreams, it is good and black is bad. Good dreams should not be shared or they will not come true. On the contrary, bad ones (nightmares) should be shared or they will come true. Some were silly like if you consume meat in your dreams it means you will suffer from a upset stomach.
As far as I remember my dreams have mostly been neutral, neither happy nor sad. And mostly they are abstract as if they are puzzles to be solved. Sometimes they are absolutely absurd. But whatever they are, they keep the mystery alive.
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. ~William Dement
I am taking part in The Write Tribe Festival of Words 8th – 14th December 2013 (Day 7: DREAM/S). And this post marks the end of the same.