I
somehow managed to, yet again, sleep for twelve hours last night. The result of
that, for some inexplicable to me reason, was a huge- donkey (as I’m not, apparently,
allowed to say ‘ass’) sequence of bizarre as Hell dreams.
The
really perturbing bit was that I remembered most of them when I woke up today.
For instance, in one of them, a friend of mine told me that someone had stolen his
most prized possession- a fist- sized Faberge egg worth £ 2mln.
I
then set fire to the said friend’s house (as that was, obviously, the most
logical thing to do...) and called the police and the fire service, saying that
I started the fire (again, ultra logical).
My
friend then came in and, almost drowning in tears, told one of the insurers
(whom I had apparently also called in...) that his Faberge Egg was
destroyed in the fire.
‘Insurance fraud.’, I shouted. ‘I stole the egg last night, it couldn’t have
been in the house when I set fire to it’.
I’m
sure that all of you, at some point, have wanted to control your dream and what
you were saying in it mainly to refrain from sounding like a complete idiot.(we CAN do that; it’s called a LUCID dream and can sometimes be controlled, see << http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP_jzImhP8s >> )
I
mean, why would anyone DO or SAY any of the above things!?
As
a constable was telling me that I had the right to remain silent and that
everything I said could and would be used against me, I interrupted him and
said:
‘And I have a right to lawyer, right?’
‘Right...’, said the constable.
‘Ah, what a coincidence! I’m a lawyer.
We’re all good then!’
At
that point I woke up, covered in cold sweat and truly ashamed of the
distasteful joke that I had attempted to make.
I
then decided to finally find out why on Earth was I dreaming so often recently.
Upon watching a couple of documentaries and reading several articles (in bed,
under the covers, cheers flu...!) I was rather surprised to find out that there
was not a definite answer to the seemingly simple question of ‘Why do we dream?’
There
are, however, several theories which are worth discussing, albeit briefly,
namely:
Dreaming acts as an
information sieve
The
dreaming process sifts through all of the information accumulated throughout the
day and discards those facts and patterns which are of no use to the brain (or
at least to the way in which WE use our brain). That would mean, for instance,
when dreaming, I should have forgotten all of the information on the topics
that I had been writing for my blog as they had nothing or very little to do
with my everyday activities, namely, law.
That,
as you might probably imagine, has not, however, happened; I still remember
every single piece I’ve written up for this blog.
This
theory does not, then, work UNLESS I
have somehow imbedded in my brain that
writing up my daily articles and retaining the information in those will assist
me in my day-to-day activities (which, conveniently, now include maintaining a
daily blog).
Dreaming helps us adapt
and survive
Another
theory is that we have nightmares as they prepare us for the difficulties that
we experience in real life. For instance, if a wolf chases you in your sleep,
it’s probably because one is likely to chase you on your way to work the next
day.
But
seriously; the theory states that our dreams most often include emotions
such as fear and anger simply to show us that those can be dealt with in real
life.
If
that is the case, however, why is it that other negative emotions are being
left out? Furthermore, do we not need to adapt to the positive ones, as
well...?
Dreaming acts like psychotherapy
Dreaming
is said to help you confront your greatest fears in a way which will not have
any direct consequences in or impact on your real life. Furthermore, if you
manage to learn how to control your actions whilst dreaming (LUCID dreaming, see above), you will
potentially be able to choose ways in which to tackle and deal with the said
fears.
Again,
such a theory might be seen by some as quite farfetched owing to the fact that
dreams are not the same as reality and even if you control them at all times,
you are quite aware that it is a dream and are, thus, quite braver and often do
things without caring about the repercussions that they might have; not so in
real life.
The
study of dreams is currently advancing quite rapidly mainly because scientists
are on the verge of being able to record people’s dreams.
Whether
this will help us solve the mystery or not is a different story; I guess we’ll
have to wait and see.
Until
then, eat all the cheese you want before to go to bed as it’s not true that it
gives you nightmares; on the contrary, it helps you go to sleep faster.
And
it might help you dream about cheese; how cool would that be?
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