SEC - S8W2. "The Power of Dreams."

Dreams… magical… confusing… mysterious… peculiar… unreal… sometimes just plain weird.

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According to the algorithm of Describingwords.io, there are over 998+ words that can be used to describe dreams. No wonder I will never understand dreams.

The dreams we dream at night are our collective thoughts, sounds, experiences, images, and even desires that go through our minds when we are sleeping and it happens to all of us.

What so many of us don’t realize is that we need these dreams. Dreaming is crucial for our health. Dreams support the functions of our well-being.

Do I believe in dreams?

There are two types of dreams that we can believe in.

1. The dreams we dream at night
2. The dreams we set for ourselves

Do I believe in both these types of dreams? Not at all!

* The dreams we dream at night

I use to believe in my “nighttime dreams” when I was younger. Now that I am older and greyer I don’t anymore.

Even the experts cannot agree on the fact that dreams have a deeper meaning and that we must believe in them.

Most humans believe in their dreams. Is it wrong? Not at all!

I might not believe but one thing is certain, I believe that these dreams can serve a purpose. They can help us to process what is happening in our lives, the difficulties we are experiencing, the scared of the unknown, and the losses we have suffered.

* The dreams we set for ourselves

These are those dreams that we dream about since we were tiny tots. Dreams of being your own boss, traveling the world, and of course let’s not forget driving a smart car for the men and having your own home for the ladies.

I am a strong believer in these dreams.

It is simple to get what you want in life. This you do by creating dreams for yourself. What is not simple is how difficult it is to fulfill those dreams.

Our dreams can give us that push in life that we need. They get us all excited, they lift us out of difficult situations, and they carry us.

Dreams can make the impossible possible.

How often do I dream?

If it is up to me the answer will be, not often.

If it is up to the scientists the answer will be, multiple times each night.

According to them the average amount of dreams are 4 -6 dreams per night and they can last anything from 1 minute to 20 minutes.

I don’t sleep long periods at a time. Maybe that is the reason that I feel that I don’t often dream, or maybe it is that I cannot remember that I had a dream.

Now I cannot help to wonder. Do patients that receive sleep therapy dream?

Do I remember my dreams?

Have you ever woken up in the morning knowing that you had a dream but you cannot remember what the dream was all about? Guess what? You are not alone as this happens to 95% of humans.

This often happens to me which is just proof that I am a normal living human being and not an Extra-Terrestrial figure as my children saw me for when they were younger.

Many times I will wake up at night to go to the bathroom remembering my dream. I will even tell myself that I must remember this dream so that I can tell it to my husband the next morning.

The next morning, I can remember that I want to tell him about my dream, BUT I have no recollection of what the dream was about.

What frustrates me, even more, is that I will start telling him and then all of sudden it feels like I am building that 529 Dalmatians jigsaw puzzle, the most difficult puzzle in the world.

My answer is NO, I don’t easily remember my dreams.

My strangest dream

I love cooking for my family and when I cook, I cook enough.

With Sunday lunches, before our big move, there were always 15+ hungry tummies to fill.

I was always scared that there will not be enough food for everyone hence me cooking more food than what was required. Often there were leftovers not only for the next day but also for the day thereafter.

Instead of “cooking up a storm” my mom used to say that I am “cooking for a whole army.”

I once had this dream of me doing grocery shopping in a supermarket.

When I got to the bread sections the loaves of bread started FLYING at me. Angry bread, happy bread, screaming bread, crying bread, bread rolls with wings, bread slices of all the colors of the rainbow. They just kept on coming and coming and coming.

I woke up when my husband called my name.

Is there a connection between my dream and the fact that I cook for an army? Umh…

Luckily I only dreamed of it once and it for sure did not put me off from eating my beloved bread.

The same dream?

Now, this is where my dreaming becomes interesting.

I won’t often have the same dream several times but I will continue dreaming from where I have stopped the previous times. This happens without me even thinking about the previous dream.

It will also not happen the next night but in months to come. Best of all, these are the dreams that I do remember. Weird!

The problem is that eventually, it will stop without me knowing what the ending was.

Another interesting dream experience is that my husband and I will dream about the same issues but in different circumstances or with different outcomes on the same night.

For example, both of us will dream that we’ve bought a new car. I will dream that I bought a family car and we went on a vacation. He will dream that he bought the red flashing Ferrari and took it for a test drive on Kyalami, South Africa’s race track. Whacky!

Is this what Yoko Ono meant when she said; “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”

Whatever you do… dream on… Don’t let the skeptics out there put you off dreaming.