On Dreaming Up Daily

When we consider our forms of entertainment, we really ought to include dreaming. There is this theory--which I arrived at independently but which apparently goes back at least as far as Freud--that says the function of dreaming is to keep us asleep. To do that, dreams become fascinating and powerful--imbuing images and scenes with hyperreality and infusing them with joy, or keeping us gripped by strangeness, anxiety, fear, horror, and keeping us involved with surprise, dangers, opportunities, tasks and complexities. In other words, by keeping us entertained. We're so involved that we don't want to wake up, so the body and brain get a little more time for rest and self-maintenance.

I'm prompted then to wonder, which came first: the dream picture, or the picture on the cave wall? The story told, or the story dreampt?

As to where dreams come from, or what they consist of--we can be pretty sure of at least one source of subject matter: memory. We dream in the form of pictures and stories (as well as other forms perhaps not so easily named), and the content often includes memories. Dreams sometimes seem to recover memories we didn't know we had. Dreams certainly combine pieces of memory, by putting together people from different times and places in our pasts, for example.

We know of course that amnesiacs can't remember the past. But did you know that they typically can't conceive of a future? That was a mystery that inspired some brain research, including a new study which shows that, at least in some basic ways, remembering the past and envisioning a future are interrelated.

This study seems to show this in a limited way, especially focused on the body's imagining (or imaging) a personal future--perhaps on "daydreams" of a personal future. But it does suggest a possible answer to the conundrum of why people can't envision a future strongly enough to work towards it (if it's a good one) or prepare to deal with it (if it's a possible future disaster, for instance) or forestall it, so it won't happen or won't be as bad as it could be without preparation.

Memories can be very strong, as can dreams. But we do seem to have a built-in means of anestitizing them, called forgetting--which can mean forgetting how something feels as well as whether it happened. This could well be a way to keep our attention available to present threats and opportunities. But if we forget too much--even too much of how we felt, and how an event affected everything--we can't imagine the full meaning of something like that being repeated in the future.

Social commentators note that we seem to be a society that doesn't focus much on the future, and also has little concrete sense of the past. In fact, amnesia is a term they sometimes use. Maybe it's the BUY NOW mindset of a hyper-commercial culture. Maybe it's the tense social ethic of keeping up with the instantaneous--like all the news media hysterically pounding away at one story for a news cycle or two, and then forgetting it completely and moving on to the next absolutely important thing.

Maybe it's even more the constant barrage of information, leaving us no time to do anything but cope with the most demanding, and sort and classify the rest. Overload can obliterate an internal sense of identity, and/ or cut us off from real engagement with others. Overload can shut down memory and numb imagination and yet also blunt our appreciation of the fullness of the present moment. We've got amnesia in all directions.

Well, one of the lessons of life may well be that we're always in over our heads. Dreaming may well be a device to help us out in that regard. But maybe we need to learn from the show as well as let it entertain us. Memory, the moment and envisioning the future are probably all interrelated, even as functions, as skills. Being conscious of that may help us in many ways. So in addition to whatever discipline gets you deeply into the present moment, and whatever time and space you give your memories, don't forget to dream up...and do it daily.