How big a role do dreams play in our lives?

How important a role do dreams play in our lives? Are we inherently dependent on them for some crucial aspects of our lives?

                                                                  -Ashwin Ramesh

Ever had that dream where you are falling off a cliff or into a large black hole, and you suddenly wake up and realize how vivid and lifelike that experience was? Well, you aren’t the only one. Even more so, these experiences show us how important and intricately involved dreams are for us. The problem is that most of us are quite unconscious during our dreams, owing to which we cannot seem to recollect. On the other hand, their inherent intricate “realness” shows us how important they are for us in our everyday realities. Many theories have been associated with the dreams we have and why do we have it and how it affects our lives.

Freud’s theory suggests that dreams are a representation of our unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. That might be right as we often dream about things that we plan to do or places we might wish to go. These dreams motivate us to achieve them in real life. Have you ever experienced sleeping over some of your problems, and waking up with a clearer mind or perhaps even a solution? The answer to that intriguing question is: dreams serve to “clean up” the mind from all the cluttered thoughts, refreshing the mind, and thus we end up with a better perspective the next day.

Tripped Out Thought: Maybe, dreams function as our inherent recycling system, where unfinished thoughts and fantasies are completed in any scenario that we wish them to happen so that we can move on in life without letting these same thoughts drag us down.

Dreams are affected by many things, like what you eat, your problems, arguments, your relationships with various people, past events or future plans, and this all are connected with our thoughts eventually. The dreams that one remembers clearly is based upon the weight and importance people give to certain things in their life. People are likely to remember negative dreams with vivid details if they include the person they already dislike. They also remember positive dreams if it involves someone they love or something they want to achieve. The way people interpret their dreams affects their life, because it supports their already existing beliefs about themselves, the world and the people around them. If someone dreams that they are going to fail a test, they might be less motivated to study or they might even perform poorly.

Dreams may or may not have meaning, even though there are various interpretations about the dreams we have. Nevertheless, sometimes people take major life decisions based on the contents of their dreams and it has effectively helped them change the course of their lives to a large extent.

As Walt Disney said, “A dream is a wish your heart makes,” we all are contributing a major part to our dreams by our daily actions, thoughts and words which in turn influences our dreams which reflect in our lives. As seen above, there are several important and irrepressible aspects which connect our dreams as well as our inherent realities. Maybe, it is about time we started paying attention to them.

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Further Tripping…

Read about Sigmund Freud’s own exploration into the world of dreams

Read about why dreams are like unopened letters which need to be addressed in order to make progress in life