Dreaming

by Javier

When we sleep, images lurk in our mind. These images show us our desires, our fears, our memories, our problems, our solutions, our feelings, and our imagination. These images are often referred to as dreams.

The word “dream” comes from root words meaning deception, illusion, phantasm, ghost, lie, apparition, joy, and music, and has been most recently used to describe the images which we see in our sleep.

Everyone dreams, though some might not have any memory of doing so. Dreams are one of the very few things that all people have in common; even the blind are capable of dreaming with smells, and sounds and other senses.

But what makes a dream a dream? What is the factor that distinguishes reality from dream, fantasy, or even nightmares?

Since the beginning of time people have dreamt, however over the years how people view these dreams and what they make of them have changed. In the past, dreams were very important to the lives of people. In some cases dreams were seen as messages from god or another superior being.

There was a time when parents lulled their children to sleep by telling them to dream. Parents encouraged these dreams by telling children that if they dreamed they could achieve. In today’s society dreams have lost their value and meaning, in fact one could say dreams are almost looked upon as being worthless or time wasting. Both the concept of dreaming and dreams themselves are being replaced by the act of “living here in the real world”. One perfect example of this is how the word “dreamer” is used in a negative way to describe someone who lives in a world of fantasy, someone who dreams of “unrealistic” things, such as someone who dreams of a world without war. Parents now tell their children to stop following dreams and fantasies, in order to achieve in life.



It is undeniable that today’s society is obsessed with believing what they can see and touch and hear as opposed to dreams. In fact, unrealism is so harshly criticized by society that it affects even the smallest of things or the most urgent of things. In Hollywood movies are viciously attacked when characters demonstrate impossible feats such as flying or surviving a five hundred foot drop. People are so eager to create a distinguishable barrier between what is real and what is not. In moderns science scientists do not get enough money from the government to advance in technology which would benefit mankind because politicians dismiss their ideas as silly dreams that would never be fulfilled or worthy of carrying out.

The mind works in strange ways, take this for example; how can we dream of something which we have never seen or heard off. Since dreams have some root in our imagination and real events doesn’t that mean that there must be some sort of reality to our dreams?

Some people believe that dreams have an underlying meaning and that understanding your dream is a key to understanding yourself and your issues.

Psychologists explain that due to the vividness of a dream it is common to mistake the events of a dream as actually happening. If your dreams are based of something you have experienced before then you may remember something from your dream as an event that actually happened.



The occurrence of dreams has been a battleground for philosophical debate for many centuries. There are many philosophers who tried explaining the thin, fine line between dreams and reality. Bertrand Russell explained the dream phenomenon and their potential power with the quote: “I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not.” This was referring to an idea that if the brain was so powerful as to being able to create entire universes and lives during sleep, could one prove that the mind was not capable of creating an alternate reality.

Dreams and the extent of their powers have fueled people’s imaginations for centuries. Some of the most popular ideas about dreams include the idea that we might somehow be dreaming at this very moment and are not aware of it. Another is the idea that if the mind can create characters in dreams, which have their own unique personality, then who is to say that we are not part of someone else’s dream? There is no known way of proving against it. There is another belief that dreams could be an alternate reality.

While psychologists continue to study dreams and believers continue to debate the extent of dreams, we people continue to dream on in our ideas, in our sleep, and in our lives.