Dreams
Did you know that some people have very active and imaginative dream lives while others never dream at all? Some people dream in black and white even though they are not colorblind while others dream in color. Still others could not tell you what colors they dream in. Some people dream very fantastic adventures each night while others dream of the mundane, doing chores around the house or walking the dog in the dream which may be something they do routinely at home.
The upshot is how much each person dreams and what they dream about is as diverse and individual as the people themselves. Most people dream to some extent although it is not uncommon to not dream at all. Actually, that is not true if you go by what scientists have discovered in their study of sleep and what goes on when we are unconscious. These studies have shown that we all dream each night. But many of us do not remember our dreams. The reason for that is the only dreams we remember are those that might be occurring as we start to wake up. That means that perhaps your most exciting and interesting dreams may be vanishing from your mind each night.
What happens in our dreams is the material for many movies, television shows and pop music songs. A popular situation comedy show that starred Bob Newhart used the idea of a dream when that long running comedy came its final show. For their conclusion, the writers suggested that Bob dreamed the entire seven year run of the show and that he was really the star of the last show Newhart had been a part of. That is just one of many fun ways that how we dream has become part of popular culture.
Much of how we dream is affected by our physical state. Of course, something not spoken of very often is how teenage boys will have wildly imaginative erotic dreams, which will coincide with nocturnal emissions that their young bodies are using to tune their rapidly expanding hormonal growth. But all of us have had the experience of waking up with a vivid dream on our minds only to discover that you may have dreamed you only had one leg because in reality, the missing leg had actually just fallen asleep.
We will probably never stop being fascinated by our dreams. They can be fun, exciting, disturbing, boring or frightening. Then the next night you can have a completely different dream that takes you to another fantastic world. We probably would not be human if we didn’t have our dream life. It is a healthy part of the way our minds work. And if sometimes those dreams entertain and amuse us a little bit, well that is ok too.
