Why are dreams important?
The very crux of being human is our ability to create stories. Frankenstein; Romeo and Juliet; Alice in Wonderland; The History of Canada; “what happened yesterday on the way home from work.” Like all plants and animals, we are alive. We move around, recognize places and people, and constantly interact. We breathe in and out; we eat and are eaten. Part of the interdependent web of all existence, we are alive. We live our lives.
But there is something more. We are human animals, and as such, we also comment on the process ad nosium. We name things. This is “a chair.” We give “the chair” a purpose. It is “to sit on.” We define relationships. She is Mary, “my boss.” He is Simon, “my friend.” We build communities. We create something called “a school” and then divide it into “classes.” We join clubs; we live in cities; and those cities are part of a nation. And then we tell the history of that nation. We are constantly organizing life: naming, defining, structuring our universe and then telling stories about what it is and what happened to it; who we are and who we might become. Setting goals, issuing laws and commandments, defining “right” and “wrong”: we are creating meaning and that meaning is our culture.
Every culture offers choices; it also hems us in. During the day, we live in accord with culture’s expectations. I am an English-speaking female alive now for over half a century, living in a place called Toronto. Those facts allow many opportunities: art galleries, libraries, jobs, friendships. But those facts also restrict me. All the progress in the world will not let me evade my own death. Likewise, there are all sorts of things I cannot do. I cannot walk into the elementary school up the street and become a student in the kindergarten class.
During the day our lives are ruled by nature’s law and society’s norms. But at night our reality is transformed into endless possibility. We are completely free. And in that freedom, my true yearnings and my deepest desires are allowed to speak. I can live forever, I can fly like a bird, I can go to kindergarten – in my dreams. I can wear a purple dress, feed the gerbils, paint a picture of a fire-breathing dragon that turns into a real dragon right there in the middle of the classroom.
We all have dreams, lots of dreams, every night. It’s called REM sleep. We have dreams because we are human. Our dreams are our own personal stories: written, directed, produced and acted out thorough the power of our own imagination. We are the casting agent, the costume designer, the set designer and the cameraman. Our dreams tell our own story.
Where do our dreams come from? They are a product of our own imagination. They are our own personal Alice in Wonderland, our own Frankenstein, our own Romeo and Juliet, our own story about our own life, with all its joys and its struggles.
Why do we dream? One theory calls them remnants of unsolved issues from the day before. We go to bed with a problem and we work it out at night. I take a broader view. Yes, our daily problems show up in our dreams. But the problems that really bother us are not the little frustrations of the day before. It’s not about the parking place I couldn’t find. The real issues that surface during the night are the painful, dysfunctional patterns by which we live day-in and day-out, and the great terrors of our mortal condition. I don’t want to die. What am I going to do with the rest of my life, now that my children are grown? Why do my husband and I keep having the same silly argument over and over again? My best friend is gone and I am desperately lonely. I have spent years in school, but will I be able to get a satisfying job? Worried about aging and death, terrified of the challenges we must face, trapped inside patterns of behaviour that do not work for me: these are the subject matter we are working on every night, through our dreams.
The three-year-old is starting a new daycare: a strange place, unknown people, unfamiliar routine. On the way over she says: “I had a bad dream last night. There was a big monster and I was really scared.” “What happened?” “He was coming to get me.” “What did you do?” “I wanted to run away. But I was too scared to move. It was just about to eat me and I punched it on the nose.” “That was pretty brave of you.” “And then, guess what happened. It turned into a really cute little cat. And I wasn’t scared anymore.” Yes, the new daycare is monstrously big and terrifying. But, she is ready to handle the situation, and confident that her new surroundings will become a place of comfort and familiarity..
Yes, dreams have meaning. But, how are we to find the meaning? It can feel very perplexing at first, but with patience and persistence the meaning will become clear. Dreams have a different logic than daytime logic. But they are not hiding their meaning. It is like paying attention to a hidden voice inside yourself, engaging with that hidden partner in an ongoing conversation, and taking the insights that emerge into account as you live your life. Remember, Engage, Respond. Those are the three steps to the art of dream interpretation. That’s it. The three-year-old I just mentioned remembered her dream; she talked it over with mom, and she marched off to daycare to meet the challenge. Remember, engage, and respond: it is about knowing yourself and becoming who you were meant to be.