Dreams don’t work unless you do.

~John C. Maxwell~

Have you ever found yourself pondering over the enigmatic nature of dreams? Who among us hasn’t experienced the vivid landscapes of our subconscious? They can be a kaleidoscope of emotions – beautiful, happy, funny, scary, forewarning, and prophetic. But what exactly is a dream? Are there different ways of dreaming? Let’s embark on a journey of discovery.

Mostly, we dream during the night when we fall into a deep sleep, and it happens more than once that we can’t remember what we have dreamed. But let’s put the latter point aside.

When we dream, it’s like stepping into a vividly painted world, where we often find ourselves as the protagonist. The question that lingers is, what fuels these dreams? Are they the echoes of our subconscious fears, the remnants of our daily experiences, or the whispers of our deepest wishes and hopes? This is the realm of our nocturnal dreams.

Then, we dream in broad daylight with our eyes wide open. These are the moments when we plunge deep into our thoughts and drift away from the environment in which we find ourselves in this time sequence. We create scenes in our heads, dreaming of possible events and outcomes about matters near our hearts, occupying our minds for recent or extended periods.

All in all, we can classify these two ways of dreaming as dreams, which can be recurrent and repeat themselves in a state when the dreamer is half-conscious.

But there’s more to dreams than just the ones we experience during deep sleep or half-sleep during daylight. We also set goals and aspirations with full consciousness to give our lives purpose. These goals, often seeming impossible, are what we call, for that reason, dreams. Yet dreams with these characteristics have a remarkable potential to become a reality if we stay focused, work hard, and are blessed with luck.

Considering all these attributes of dreaming altogether, we can notice that dreaming is a complex and metaphysical experience. And it gets more complicated when we try to interpret these dreams; here, I am referring to our dreams during our deep sleep. Who hasn’t woken up and tried to find what his dream means in a Dream Interpretation Dictionary? For example, I dreamed about stepping into animal poop. Does this mean that I’m going to win the lottery? Shall I get a lottery ticket? At this point, we can see how much dreams influence our thinking and behavior.

I believe dreams are beautiful, meaningful, didactic, and enlightening. They help us escape reality, which sometimes can be cruel. Therefore, in this second world, we can create a better one and a better us with all hopes and wishes, without fears. And who knows, maybe we have the luck and strength to transform it into absolute reality.

©2024, Vasiliki Papadopoulou, all rights reserved.