Why Dreams Suck and Should Be Abandoned
My wife woke up one morning with a terrible headache. She was whining about how a bad dream could have been prevented.
I consoled her and left her alone for a minute or two and came back to her. “Don’t you think it’s ok that we don’t always know what our dreams mean?”
She looked at me with a blank stare.
“You’re trying to brush it off. You aren’t being nice”, she bellowed.
I went downstairs and made some coffee. I came back upstairs with two cups in hand and said “I think it’s fair to say that dreams have no meaning, but I understand that you want to know if there is any.”
We don’t get to play the role we dreamed of
Here’s the thing about dreams: they come and go when we least expect them. They might teach us a lesson but ultimately it’s the experience that is to be experienced.
A lot of people have dreams. They wake up in the world as an infant and have dreams of being an astronaut or a truck driver, a nanny, or a financial tycoon. They desire to get by and win big. Some want it all. Others don’t want anything.
Where do dreams come from? Most importantly, why do they inhabit our lives so much and often leave us feeling empty?
When I was a kid I dreamed a lot. I would go to bed at night and look out my window. I saw my neighbor undressing in front of her window. I dreamed that one day I would have a beautiful wife like her and a nice house with lots of money.
I took a lot of trips as a kid with my family. When we drove on the interstates I remember going past the trucks and getting the truckers to honk the horn. I thought it was the coolest things ever and wanted to drive trucks one day.
I didn’t know how I would get there but I knew that somehow the universe or God or whatever would magically make it happen. I always thought that if you built it, it would come. Or no matter what I set my sights on, I would get it.
There’s a lot of talk about manifesting.
People want what they can control. They don’t want bad experiences. They want good ones. They can only glimmer for a little while until they are on to something different.
They tried to hold onto the dream — to make it work, to make it last. They tried to pick it apart and analyze it until their heads exploded.
Now they sit wondering if this is all there is.
The actors and writers on strike right now are left wondering if their dreams of big-screen success are going to be played out anymore. Maybe it’s their time to think differently and dream different dreams.
The world is changing.
If you can keep up, you are free to let nightmares hang in the background of your fanciful dreams. When the curtain calls there won’t be anyone left standing because the dreams we created weren’t meant to be.
They just lacked something that we needed more of: a healthy dose of reality and grounding.
The dreams played us until we couldn’t sleep anymore
There are times when we wake up from terrible nightmares. Other times it’s from dreams that leave us thinking what was that all about?
Why did that happen?
How come it felt that way?
Why couldn’t I do this or that?
Our dreams are a metaphor for life: They come and go and don’t last long.
One day the world will end and you will too. We might get wiped out by a plague or a giant earthquake. Maybe the sun will move further away and cause us to freeze to death. Or maybe the world will break in half.
Whatever happens, your dreams will stay the same — they will be fleeting, captivating, and inspiring. They will wake you up and move you. They will make you get up and feel pain. They will move you to new places, and leave you hanging. They will touch you at the deepest parts of yourself and still be a mystery.
The dreams you have will be played until there are none left.
When there is nothing more to dream of we will go back to sleep and leave this world. The movie will be over. We will look back and pick apart what worked or didn’t. We will critique and analyze. We may come back and start a second draft or rehearse that one line again.
We will learn and grow and dream some more.
Some will try and hold on for dear life. While others will let go.
They will face reality and change. Others will get lost in the dream and die.
The dreams of life are meant to be looked at and observed. They are meant to keep us going.
My wife looked at me one last time before I left for work. “Don’t you have any dreams you want to know more about?”
I glanced back at her. “Yeah, but they’re not that interesting anymore.”
