To me, dreams are an intriguing part of the sleep cycle. A unique experience. Its incredibly unlikely that someone - on a planet of a few billion - will ever have the same dreams as you. Contrast this to things that you think consciously - I'm probably not the first person that has thought that it would be entertaining to set Kyle Sandliands beard on fire, or that Anne Hathaway would be a damn fine "sleeping" partner, or even that it would be cool to get a giant wig and put it on the statue of liberty. Chances are pretty high that none of those thoughts, however obscure, are unique to me.
But I doubt that anyone has experienced - in the same vividness that I did - going to your next-door neighbour's house through a hole in the fence only to discover that there is a damn fine lion that wants a piece of you. The lion then proceeds to maul your little finger off, and won't stop until the homosexual planeteer from Captain Planet comes along and yells "heart!"
It was at this point that the lion stopped mauling me, and a doctor came to reattach my poor finger, but they didn't get all the pieces of skin from the lion and so it couldn't be sewn back on properly.
That was an outline of my very first nightmare, and it's bizarrity has stuck with me - which may have had something to do with waking up in a pool of sweat and checking that my fingers were all still attached.
That isn't something that I could've just consciously thought up - unless I really strained my imagination. The nature of dreams - at least many of the dreams that I have - is that they can take the most bizarre memories and feelings of your life, thrust them all together, and construct some form of narrative with them.
But what I've begun to learn is that my dreams are not just trivial events that can be forgotten upon waking. Many dreams can, in fact, provide a means through which to examine your life in a different manner. I like to think that on some occasions dreams really are your subconscious coming out to play. They play on your deepest fears, your biggest regrets, and your most intimate thoughts. In this sense dreams can - to use a cliché - allow you to think outside the box. They can grant certain perspectives about events, people, and places in your life, perspectives that your conscious mind has perhaps dismissed.
I'm thinking that maybe it is time to start learning from my dreams. Maybe it is time to embrace that which my concious mind has rejected and see circumstances through different lenses.
Because if dreams really are unique, no one else has the chance to act on them.
“You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'”
-George Bernard
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