Dreams are a parade or succession of images, ideas, lots of emotions, sensations, situations, a vast variety of “interesting” people and my all-time favorite: fantasies (hubba hubba). Regrettably we are in no control of what we are going to dream about, because dreams occur involuntarily during certain stages of sleep; and interestingly enough, we pretty much have no idea what causes our trips into the world of dreams - seriously.
Scientifically, philosophically and even religiously (whatever to the last one), we have little to no clue what is going on. Sure we can measure dream activities with all them things with long wires in different colors meaning something important, glued to temples, forehead, a nose and chest-hairs, while connected to computer like machines.
One thing we have found is that dreams occur during REM, when brain activity is at its highest during sleep. This can last from a few seconds to about twenty minutes. What? You don’t know what REM is? Oh I’m sorry, I thought you knew everything. REM = Rapid Eye Movement; the activity telling us that we have reached the peak of our sleep and that our brain is now in turbo charge mode.
We all have dream-stories, things we “experienced” while sleeping. I seriously believe that we also have a tendency to elaborate on what we dreamt and I also think that some of the stuff we dream about makes us a tad embarrassed, uncomfortable and make us feel a bit awkward; and not based on any reality at all – go figure.
A few weeks ago, I realized that Tina (actually her real name) was in one of my dreams. How Tina, who is a good friend of ours whom we have not seen in a million years, suddenly appeared in a dream of mine is weird (or interesting, if you prefer). No I am not going to tell you in what capacity Tina appeared, as that is none of your business; but I can tell you that the term awkward comes to mind. And for those of you taking notes: I did not dream about Tina, but she was in one of my dreams – big difference.
Scientifically the study of dreams is called oneirology (don’t worry, I can’t pronounce it either). I like dreams; doesn’t sound so perverted, huh? We believe that besides us Homo sapiens, birds and (other) mammals dream as well. That will explain why Tess, our dog, is mumbling and drooling and running in place while sleeping. I always wonder what the hell she is dreaming about…I wish she would tell me; but she just gives me the look that says: none of your business.
On an average we have 3-5 dreams per night. Most of them we can’t remember and then we have the occasional dreams we can recall and at times that is unfortunate.
As much as we want to, dreams of sexual content are unfortunately rare; about 8-10%, depending on age. Sexually oriented dreams are what we recall more vividly. We don’t talk a lot about them, mostly because of the participants involved; in some cases these are other than the significant others in our (real) lives. So we keep a lot of those dreams to ourselves and peace on earth – at least peace in our own little world.
Dreaming about somebody sexually, having some wild and “interesting” few minutes in DreamLand, should never be treated as cheating (link below). Remember that we are not in control of what we dream about, so feeling guilty and perhaps embarrassed is silly, but at times hard to negate.
I used to have many dreams about girls and sexual encounters with same way back when I was younger (that would be 1832); it would all be grand in my dreams. I would be Mr. Cool himself, top stud-muffin. But back on Earth, I returned to being very young, awkward, inexperienced and insecure; all those great things teenagers are “blessed” with – remember?
It is really weird that we don’t know much about dreaming. And this goes all the way back to 5,000 – 4,000 BC (or BEC, which means: Before Era of Christianity – so there). So the thing is that you and I probably know as much about that nighttime stuff than anybody else – and in a way, that is really cool.
But what is not cool is that most of our dreams are negative – sorry to say. And then some are not really dreams anymore. We experience frightening stuff, exciting in negative ways, magical and adventurous, lots of anxieties, fear, horror, despair, sadness and loss. We often find ourselves running in place like crazy trying to escape monsters, past girl-friends, most dentists, property tax-collectors, etc. That is what we call nightmares – duh… Real bad nightmares are for the most part occurring from stress, anxieties and other nasty real life emotions.
Are there exceptions? You bet you. I am not stressed what-so-ever (remember: I’m bloody retired); I live a very comfortable life and do not have a heck of a lot of worries to consider – so there. But in spite of that I still have really nasty nightmares about this and that – really horrid. So I go: Where the heck is all this coming from? And the scientific answer? We have no (explicit) clue.
You see, the thing is that I wake up sweating and swearing and then acknowledge it was only a dream. I lie awake for some moments and believe that I can go back to sleep and dream something more pleasant. But too often I go straight back to the nasty stuff, again and again – so I escape by getting up and do other stuff, other than sleeping.
At times we might acknowledge that we have an occurring dream – one from weeks ago, again last night and so forth. But it has been found that in most cases we don’t. It is only a dream we had that one time, but it feels like we dreamt it all before so vividly – again and again.
Back in the good old days, dreams were religiously dissected – literarily. Such and such dream meant this and that – and bad luck if you had a nasty dream that would cause severe adjustments and bodily harm in real life – better keep quiet, huh? By the way, Freud believed dreams stemmed from deep desires and anxieties (did he mean sex and taxes?)
Unfortunately most of our dreams are negative, as in not that pleasant, a tad confusing and disturbing and some are downright Yuk. But when we do have pleasant dreams, and not just laced with sex, but just nice, sweet, lovely and innocent dreamlike fantasies, keeping us floating around all night (it seems), we wake up feeling really good, with a gentle smile on our faces – and very rested (sigh).
Sure we wish sweet dreams to the people around us, but as you can see, it’s a lot easier said than done.
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