Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Dreaming the Future

“I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours.” — Bob Dylan

A while back, a friend of mine told me she had been having vivid dreams that she was in a relationship with one of her work colleagues. When I asked if she had ever told him about her dreams, she said no. She wasn’t sure it would be appropriate to do so.

But she insisted that she had never had such vivid dreams before, so they simply could not be false visions. “I’m already with him in my dreams. It’s so real! How could that be if it’s not going to come true?” 

It must be a vision of her future, she insisted.

That conversation got me thinking. Most of my dreams seem to be set in the past, often the distant past. I’m often starting college all over again or showing up at a new job. Those dreams are usually anxious ones because I can’t find my classes or where the office is — things like that.

Often people I know or have known are in my dreams, including those long gone, like my parents, which is confusing. But at least when I wake up I can shake them off.

Also, I realize that our dreams often reflect actual changes in our lives, things we may be anxious about. Carl Jung said that we process our subconscious in our dreams, so that’s how any underlying anxieties are likely to surface when we sleep.

My eight-year-old granddaughter’s dreams are a case in point. She says she often relives her most embarrassing moments in dreams. “If I did or said something embarrassing in front of somebody, it happens again in my dreams. I see them and suddenly I can’t help but do it again.”

That makes all kinds of sense to me. But I keep wondering about that other kind of dream, the one where we maybe, just maybe, we actually do see the future. I’ve been having some of those myself lately.

So I checked into the topic and according to the Sleep Foundation, some of us (roughly 18-38%) can and do see the future in what are known as precognitive dreams. Also, Healthline reports that Carl Jung himself had some precognitive dreams, though they were of a negative variety — foreseeing his mother’s death and world war in Europe.

But back to my friend who dreamt of a relationship with her colleague. Some months after our conversation, the two of them did hook up and become a couple.

So for them it's been happily ever after.

These days, whenever I wish somebody “happy dreams,” what I’m really saying is that I hope any positive precognitive visions you might have come true.

And I hope mine do as well.

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