I was under doctor’s orders. She wanted me to describe a dream that I had had recently. To my great surprise and her utter disbelief, I could not recollect even a single one. Rather testily she told me that I was not trying hard enough. That was when I delved into the past and related one that was once a dream but now a treasured memory. I do not know how much it helped the good lady in her diagnosis, but it certainly brought the smiles back to her face.
The dream began with a thief bending over me. Not one to panic, I pushed him back with all my might and rained blows on him. The next thing I knew, I was being roughly shaken awake. It was my husband demanding to know why I was battering him. All my claims to heroism were brushed aside. He was convinced that it was a ruse to pay him back for some imaginary wrong.
The doctor’s refusal to believe that I did not have more recent dreams was justified. According to scientists, everyone dreams every night. In fact there is no such thing as a “dreamless sleep”. However dreams are often enough quickly forgotten. This is because short term memory banks in the brain are cut off during sleep. The best way to remember dreams is to lie back perfectly still and let the details sink into the conscious mind.
Some dreams are so frightening or bizarre that we would much rather forget them. However some dreams have proved to be more than mere figments of the imagination. Abraham Lincoln dreamed of his assassination. He recounted his dream to a close friend and the details resemble closely what happened later. Dreams of precognition have occurred to others too. Sometimes dreams are an aid to creative work. Coleridge the poet wrote “Kubla Khan” after a dream. Elias Howe, the inventor of the sewing machine, visualised it in a dream and Otto Loewi found out the secret of nerve impulses from not one but two dreams!
The counterpart of the nightly dream is the day-dream that provides an instant escape from boredom, disappointment and even despair. The most wonderful thing about day-dreams is that, contrary to what the poet Yeats said, no one can tread on them.
