I have been having some really weird dreams lately. Some of the dreams are just too creepy but not scary. Others are just downright nonsense. Image source: Needpix
Here are some weird ones that I had for the last few weeks (the ones that I can remember vaguely):-
1. I am the captain of Malaysian Navy ship, chasing after Indonesian pirates and blowing them off sky-high (it was great to see their faces just before my anti-ship missile hit their boat)
2. I am the Necromancer in the computer game Diablo 2 – “playing the game” in real in 3D! (The demons looked ‘fun” to kill, with all that blood)
3. I am the first Malaysian Time Traveler (ya, I blogged about it under influence of strong medication)
4. I am Darth Vader – choking queue jumpers at Sunway Toll with my powers from the dark side (now when I think about it, it is very funny – imagine Darth Vader, in a full black suit, driving a Proton Iswara!)
And the best so far…
5. I formed a new multi-cultural party and elected as the first non-Bumiputera Prime Minister (Some MPs will be restless with my appointment).
The above dreams are truly weird. Anyway, it’s great to have dreams – there is plenty to talk about over beers with my friends but anyone wondered what causes a dream?
Some say that it is caused by the information in the brain straying off; others say it is God’s way of communicating (if so, God sure have a good sense of humour – talking about my Darth Vader dream). My friend says that is something that we think of just because going to bed and the mind remembers it back though dreams.
What is a dream anyway? A dream is defined as a series of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. I checked on the net for some facts about the dream and it is interesting to read some of the facts:-
1. In your lifetime, you would’ve spent about 6 years of it dreaming. That is more than 2,100 days spent in a different world (imagine that 6 years of not being in the country! No wonder, some politicians are on a perpetual state of dreaming).
2. Dreams have been here as long as mankind. Back in the Roman Era, striking and significant dreams were submitted to the Senate for analysis and interpretation (In a Malaysian’s context, we have something similar – it is called “Wawasan 2020” and with 15 years to go, some people raise their hand to sabotage it)
3. Dreams are indispensable. A lack of dream activity can mean protein deficiency or a personality disorder (I must be eating more fish!)
4. Five minutes after the end of the dream, half the content is forgotten. After ten minutes, 90% is lost (No wonder I could not remember my close encounters with Preity Zinta).
5. Men tend to dream more about other men, while women dream equally about men and women (I guess this explains my Darth Vader dream but I am not gay material. Want to feel my force, anyone?)
6. Studies have shown that our brain waves are more active when we are dreaming than when we are awake (no wonder I am very “blur-blur” when I wake up in the morning – it is as if I have just sat for final year law exams on bed).
7. This is really interesting – Physiologically speaking, researchers found that during dreaming REM sleep, males experience erections and females experience increased vaginal blood flow – no matter what the content of the dream. In fact, “wet dreams” may not necessarily coincide with overtly sexual dream content (no comments…I said no comments).
8. Toddlers do not dream about themselves. They do not appear in their own dreams until the age of 3 or 4 (It looks like my son has to wait for another 2 years before he can be in his own dreams. These days, he just smiles whilst sleeping – is he seeing Priety Zinta?).
9. If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming (this is hard to confirm because when I am sleeping, I can’t hear my own snoring, what more remembering my dreams).
10. In a poll, 67% of Americans have experienced deja vu in their dreams, occurring more often in females than males (this I agree – I say this to some girls but they don’t believe me – I know I have seen them somewhere).
Despite that, there is no clear reason why we dream. The closest and the one that makes sense of my dreams is the theory of Sigmund Freud:-
He was of the opinion that every action and thought is motivated by our subconscious at some level. In order to live in a civilized society, we tend to repress our urges and impulses. But these urges and impulses have a way of coming to the surface in disguised forms.
It has to be released. Freud understood the symbolic nature of dreams and believed dreams were a direct connection to our subconscious. Because your guard is down during sleep, your subconscious has the opportunity to act out and express its hidden desires (text extracted from here)
So, happy dreaming