What Is Sweet Dreams - Essay Example

Sweet Dreams? A lot is told about magic and fairytales especially during our childhood where a part of each person’s stage would involve story telling before bedtime and the many mythical beliefs being introduced to each one of us such as the tooth fairy or our guardian angels. What is so amazing about being a kid who is being told of magical stories is that one truly believes that it is so and somehow creates in him or her that faith that everything is possible or can go the way they wanted to even when it is beyond normal. However, as we all grow older, all these are not necessarily forgotten but are now redefined. This means that we accept the fact that we can imagine stories in our minds but aware of the need to wake up to reality. And the nearest thing that would bring us back to a different world of magic would be when we dream dreams. One common thing between adults and children would be that both dream while they are sleeping. The only difference would be the kind of dreams each person has and of course the effect of dreams to each person. First of all, as an adult, how many times does a normal person dream dreams and what do they commonly dream of? This is the first question I asked myself. Thus, to be able to get a more variety of answers, I have called three of my friends over to a restaurant to catch up over some great milkshake and pizza while asking them about their experiences with dreaming. I chose one girl and one boy of my age and at the same time one girl who is older than I was and was living a different lifestyle than me and my two young friends have. Here I learned from my friend that the number of dreams she would have depended on the major things that has been going on with her life as of the moment. She said, “The number of dreams I have depends on the number of major things that has happened to me recently or depends on how many things made me really happy or perhaps extremely sad” (Gaffud, J.). According to my other friend, he said that he believes he is able to control when he is going to dream and when he would not. What he does is that he focuses on something before he sleeps like imagining himself being in a nice vacation spot or perhaps being with the girl of his dreams, and he would often times dream of the last thing on his mind before he went to sleep (Grijalvo, P.). However, according to my older friend who is working at a really respectable company and is living a really hectic lifestyle, she laughingly said that she just dream dreams whenever she is not too tired or when her spirit is still able to find that energy to explore the dream world when she sleeps (Borja, E.). All these answers really intrigued me especially because I somehow agreed or have my own similar experience with theirs as well. However, I wanted to know the truth behind all these preconceived thoughts about dreams and have consulted the web instead. With the web, I searched for the “reality of dreams” as a keyword and it brought me to a whole new and deeper understanding of which. In one journal, I have read about another person’s experience about dreams where I have found out that most perceptions we have about dreams, making it only a fiction of our minds that is created when we sleep, could in return reflect a reality that we have not yet fully comprehend. This was specifically expressed in one guy’s experience where he was dreaming of a girl whom he felt he had a strong bond with. In his dream they were both walking and talking and there were many people around them. It was bright, sunny, and warm as they were at a park. His dream became so vivid that he even remembered some dogs playing, women knitting at a table while both of them was having a really great conversation. He asked her if she found him attractive and she replied no and that she was engaged to be married to another guy. Despite that they continued enjoying each other’s company and he even described the dream like it was set in heaven. However, it had to end when the girl gave him a sweet kiss and then he awoke. He narrated in the journal that after waking, he cried like a baby for half an hour because he wanted to return to the dream and never let it end but he just could not bring himself back to it. He did not know the girl or any of the characters in his dream. The only thing he knew was the fact that they were all real. Then he realized that his dream was not just a fiction of his mind. It was a reality of the fear he could not face which is encountering a feeling of great loss and aloneness (Khurana, S.). Thinking of my recent dream where I was burdened by the loss of almost all my teeth, I wondered whether there could be the same kind of depth of truth it could bring but I never got any enlightenment after analyzing it. Thus, I decided to look deeper into the scientific functions of the brain and sleep to be able to understand what could be another side of the story of dreams which is scientifically backed up. Here, I have learned that dreaming has a direct correlation with our central nervous system’s activity in the so called rapid eye movement which has a similar characteristic to our waking activity. What happens here is that rather than the slow waves of deep sleep, our minds can sometimes still be active which creates thinking while one is sleeping. The picture of one’s thoughts then would be called dreams (The Reality of Dreaming. Dhushara. N.p, n.d). Putting this to mind, now I know why every time I have a test coming up or perhaps I am being pressured or are worrying about something before I go to sleep, when I wake up the next day I feel like I have not really slept at all but did all the work I needed to do then I realized that it was just a dream. Thinking further of dreams that I personally have, I am wondering why I have dreams that I totally do not remember after I have woken up while I have a set of dreams that I can vividly recall even after years. Well, although many people claim to dream rarely or perhaps do not have dreams that are as vivid as the experiences they have in real life, some tests were performed that confirms the reason why people have dreams they remember and have those that they do not because of the subsequent periods of deep non-dreaming sleep that alternate with the dreaming state during sleep (The Reality of Dreaming. Dhushara. N.p, n.d). I know this could sound a bit unclear so to further explain, sleep is accompanied by specific paralysis of the muscles below the neck which prevents us from acting out our dreams although at times we may struggle to do so especially when our dreams are high in movements. However, there are those people who can be able to go beyond thus paralysis that makes them sleep walk. I remember my sister who has a problem with this and at one point though we saw her sleeping in her bad that night, we found her in the porch the next day. Sleep walking could really be dangerous but with my sister’s experience, it was really more of an interesting ability she has that I don’t. Now, I wonder about what almost every child studies in class which could really be related to this topic, which is a wet dream. As a child, I though wet dreams are those that make a child pee on their bed while asleep because they had a nightmare that night or because they are falling off from a high place in a dream. However, a wet dream as I have “Googled” is something that teen guys are prone to have. This is that white or yellowish discharge they get in their pants and are not necessarily dreams though the reason for getting it would be dreaming. So, if wet dreams are not dreams, then what are they? I have also asked this question a lot of times to myself. Now I know that this is a nocturnal emission or a discharge at night that guys usually get. This fluid is actually a fluid that contains sperm which is discharged from the penis during ejaculation while a guy is asleep. The reason for this would be when a guy has sexual images in his dreams (What Are Wet Dreams? ." KidsHealth - the Webs most visited site about childrens health. N.p., n.d). Sometimes, guys wake up from a wet dream but sometimes they sleep through it. Well, we have already tackled much about dreams and clarifying what a “wet dream” really is. Now it is about time to answer the question I have before writing this paper which is, “what is the effect of dreams in waking life”? Well, according to a newspaper article, dreams greatly affect waking life especially the way a person interacts socially especially if one does not know how to break off from a dream that easily. This is because of the fact that if a certain sleeper awakes from perhaps a bad dream and remembers the emotional feelings he had in the dream, his waking-related mood would definitely be affected (Nicholson, Jeremy, M.S.W., and Ph.D.. "The impact of dreams on your social life. | Psychology Today." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. N.p., n.d). I could give an example of which when my niece had a really bad nightmare that night before her birthday party. She was crying the moment she woke up and she was telling all of us about the big cookie jar monster that would eat all her cakes and cookies for her birthday party that day. Because she could not let go of the dream, she ended up looking out after all the cookies and pastries being served on her birthday party because she thought they’re all the cookie jar monsters who are going to ruin her birthday. Bibliography: Khurana, Simran. "About.com Quotations." The Truth About Dreams and Reality 1 (2006): 1. Print. "The Reality of Dreaming." Dhushara. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2012. . "What Are Wet Dreams? ." KidsHealth - the Webs most visited site about childrens health. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2012. . Nicholson, Jeremy, M.S.W., and Ph.D.. "The impact of dreams on your social life. | Psychology Today." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness + Find a Therapist. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2012. . Gaffud, Jane. Personal interview. 19 Mar. 2012. Grijalvo, Peter . Personal interview. 19 Mar. 2012. Borja, Elirose. Personal interview. 19 Mar. 2012. Read More