Dreams are one of life’s mysteries. The definition of a dream is a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. The concept of dreams raise a lot of questions, such as; What do they mean? Everybody has theories and studies but it is one of those mysteries that no one has a full answer to.

According to WebMD, “dreams can occur anytime during sleep. But most vivid dreams occur during deep, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the brain is most active.” The REM stage of your sleep is a very interesting stage and is when most of your vivid dreams occur. According to Emlii, “during the REM stage of your sleep, the body is paralyzed through a mechanism that keeps your body from moving physically because of the dream.” To me that is a sort of frightening fact, that your dream can make your body from moving.

The question I always had was how come we don’t remember most of our dreams? According to Emili “there’s a time limit to how much you can remember about your dream. Only within five minutes since you are up from your sleep, an average person’s dream is forgotten and in just 10 minutes, 90 percent of the dream is gone.” That explains why we only really remember bits and pieces of our dreams. We never know the entire dream although you probably had multiple dreams in one night.

Emili also says, “an average human being spends 6 whole years of his/her life dreaming.” That is a lot of dreaming but that shows how much of your life is spent in your dreams. A lot of times we want to know what our dreams mean or if they mean anything. According to WebMD, “some researchers say dreams have no purpose or meaning and are nonsensical activities of the sleeping brain. Others say dreams are necessary for mental, emotional and physical health,” and that “Sigmund Freud believed dreams are a window into our subconscious.” We sometimes have dreams that are very strange and so out there but some believe that they are metaphors that mean something. According to Emili, “there’s nothing strange about these dreams because they are only talking in a symbolic language like poems.”

I personally, like the idea of dreams meaning something. I like the idea that the dreams are to be taken symbolically rather than literally. Sigmund Freud’s idea that “dreams are a window into our subconscious,” is a beautiful concept to me.

Lucid dreaming is another, very interesting thing. Lucid dream is when you are in a dream but are aware that you are dreaming. I have had moments where I am in a nightmare but in the nightmare, I knew I was in a dream. That has only happened once and the dream is very broken up but I am not exactly sure it counts as lucid dreaming. Apparently, people can actually try to lucid dream on purpose. According to HowToLucid.com, “the first scientific evidence of this experience was published by doctor Keith Hearne, who managed to track the eye movements of people who were in a lucid dream and deliberately moving the eyes in a specific pattern that they’d agreed on beforehand.” It takes a lot of concentration and “mind-programing.”

There are so many crazy but interesting concepts when it comes to dreams, yet it still ends up being a mystery. There are theories and researchers trying to find answers but the mind is such a complicated thing. I still find it interesting that some dreams we have our common with other people such as the falling dream. It is crazy that even when you are sleeping, you are living through your dreams and the whole topic of the subconscious mind is astonishing and full of mysteries. However, the fact that dreams are a mystery, makes them all the more beautiful.