Dreams. You know, like the Cranberries song.

I'm about to enter dangerous waters: I plan to type something related to sleep. In the past, whenever I've done this it ends up amounting to little more than me complaining about how hard life is for poor little old me. I realize this, and I realize it's probably not very interesting to anyone who actually reads this. But I think this one's different. Yes, I'll probably get a little long-winded (I probably already have), but there's more to this one.

Dreams. Lately I've been having some amazingly vivid, sometimes horrifying dreams. Regardless of the content, I'll frequently wake up and have an insanely hard time trying to distinguish between the dream and reality. One time - and I'm not exaggerating - it took me nearly an hour to figure out which one was real. And that's the thing about dreams: within the dream itself, it is indistinguishable from reality. It makes no difference what's going on. Let's use a cliche dream (that I don't remember ever having) and say I'm flying. In that moment, I am actually experiencing that sensation. According to the signals bouncing around my brain, I am truly actually having the experience of flying through the air. My brain is telling me that I see the ground hundreds of feet below me. It's telling me I feel the wind blowing past me, and that I hear it rush over my ears. In a truly vivid dream, every one of the senses experiences a sensation related to the events of the dream. And this is why I would argue that dreams are essentially indistinguishable from experiences we have in reality. Our senses are our only connection with the outside world. If, right now, I pulled a Superman and started flying around, the only way I would know I'm having that experience is through my senses. So, if I sense that in a dream, how is it any different?

I guess it could be argued that the sensations experienced during a dream are only the mind's best approximation of what we would sense in that situation. But there is a much more weighty side to dreams - the emotion attached. In a vivid flying dream, my brain really thinks that I am flying. It then provides the appropriate emotional response to that (excitement, freedom, fear, whatever). To my brain, I am actually flying, so even if the experience is different than it would be in reality, the emotional response is indistinguishable.

Usually, for me, the more tragic and emotionally unsettling dreams stick (though this isn't always the case). I'm tempted to write some of them out, but I'm afraid they'll appear trite to anyone other than me (I've never been told a dream that meant as much to me as it did to the person that had it. Usually it means nothing). I guess the question that's been on my mind lately is this: What should be done with the very real emotion experienced in very unreal (even surreal) dreams?

And I suppose a universal answer to this question doesn't exist, but I think I know how most people deal with it. There is one sharp distinction between dreams and reality, and that is continuity. If I break my leg in a dream, I will almost definitely not have a broken leg in the next dream I have. But if I break my leg before going to bed, it'll still be broken when I wake up. Using this logic, we can talk ourselves through the aftermath of the dream. It usually goes something like this. Only with the blurriness that accompanies the early morning. "Okay, what just happened? Oh no, someone killed Mildred. How did this happen? This is so surreal. What am I going to do? I've got to do something. Okay, I'm in my bed. If someone just killed Mildred five minutes ago, and I was there, and it JUST happened, how did I get into bed? It must have just been a dream. It was nothing." Then we go about our regular daily routine, not thinking much about it. If you still have a strange feeling about it, you might call Mildred, just in case. But everything in reality points to the fact that this event did not occur, so you can safely push it aside and never think about it again. Unlike a real event, there will be no reminders (e.g., Mildred will not have a funeral, she will not be permanently absent from your life) so it can safely be forgotten.

I'm not sure this is the best way to deal with this kind of situation. In this example, Mildred, who is presumably a close friend or family member, has been killed. In that instant of the dream, and possibly for a brief moment upon waking, the real emotions accompanying the murder of someone close to you could be felt. Not only can you feel the somewhat common emotion of the loss of a loved one, but also the less common knowledge that someone caused this to happen, possibly a desire for revenge, possibly the horror of having witnessed it, and in the worst of scenarios, being responsible yourself. I think these emotions express several things about our personalities that are valuable tools in understanding ourselves. I've already gone on too long here, so I'll condense this thought. We might as well process the experiences we have and use them to our advantage rather than push them aside and potentially allow them to build up into who-knows-what.

That was a little less coherent than I originally planned, but I think I got most of it out there. Anyways, that's what I've been thinking lately.