Sean--Dreams

What are dreams? Are they abstract ideas that just randomly flow through or head? Are they our deepest wants and desires? Are they obtainable or are they so radical that they could never be obtained? The literal definition of a dream is “a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep.” but is that all it really is- just a series of thoughts and images? I don’t think that it’s that simple. I believe that every dream has some sort of meaning in our life and that each dream is somehow connected. What we observe in the world and how we process these things add to how we shape our dreams whether it be a literal dream as you sleep or as a metaphor for a life goal. Many times a dream will seem so crazy and just ridiculous that we either think that we’re going insane or that we may be on drugs, but I believe that that dream has some kind of physical connection to our beliefs, thoughts and morals. For instance, a traumatic experience in someone’s life may cause them to dream solely about that because of how it impacted their life. This happens because that is all they think about all the time so when the brain shuts down whilst they sleep the thoughts are trapped and still rolling around in their head so what their subconscious does is it forms the person’s dreams based on the thoughts still in their mind. This also applies to nightmares and how you feel as if you are in actual danger when in reality it’s your mind playing games with you. If you see a scary movie or if something has frightened you and that is constantly buzzing in your mind and you go to sleep, like the person who had a traumatic experience, the thoughts are still embedded in their mind and transfer to when they fall asleep. If this is true, then the same can be said for basically any experience in life that has had some sort of impact on a person. Llana Simons, an expert on dream interpretation and sequence, said “… those poems we tell ourselves at night in order to experience our unconscious wishes as real. Dreams allow us to be what we cannot be, and to say what we do not say, in our more repressed daily lives. For instance, if I dream about burning my workplace down, it's probably because I want to dominate the workplace but am too nervous to admit that aggressive drive when I'm awake and trying to be nice to the people who might give me a raise.” Even our dreams that we have that we wish to achieve in life are based on what we absorb from our experiences and from the world around us. We form what we want to do in life because someone or something persuaded us to pursue that goal. Dreams aren’t just random thoughts or ideas that our subconscious makes up because it’s bored, they are based off of real life experiences and reflect our desires, fears and ambitions. Llana Simons essay: what do dreams do for us https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-literary-mind/200911/what-do-dreams-do-us