Dreams

I think I said this in the last post but I believe there are times that the universe is trying to send you a message but you have to be willing to listen. See I kind of live in this zone of being rational enough to doubt a lot of stuff but open minded enough to not totally rule it out. Maybe that just makes me confused and leads to thoughts like the one I mentioned above.

Which brings us to dreams. What are they? Just some random parts of your mind that don’t get used during the day taking over and having some meaningless fun. Or things buried in your head that you haven’t fully resolved yet. Or messages from another place. I suspect there are many theories behind this but I find that with things like this, science does a better job of explaining the “how” and not so much with the “why”.

I mean we know that if you deprive someone of the sleep needed to reach dream state, they physically suffer. Why? What evolutionary purpose is served by requiring us to get to a place where we can turn off conscious thought for a bit and let other part out to play? We know animals dream? Why? Some people remember dreams and others don’t. Some have vivid dreams and other don’t. Why? Topics like this are kind of why I don’t really agree with those who are 100% rational. We don’t have all the answers and I think we get in trouble when we try to pretend that we do.

I have one genre of recurring dreams. The locations change but it is always me trying to catch a flight somewhere but having a series of delays keeping me from reaching the goal. I never get to the point where I actually miss or make the flight because I either wake up or the dream shifts to something else. But there is that whole stressful feeling of being about to miss something. Not a nightmare but not really a pleasant dream either. As best as I can figure out, that dream usually pops up when I’ve got lots of stuff to get done at work and I feel like I’m always running behind.

When our previous dog, Chrissy, died, we were out of town (something about going on vacation with old dogs doesn’t work for us). Well, she actually died in the vets office when we told them to stop the life saving measures they were trying. But she was never conscious and we didn’t get to truly say goodbye.

For some weeks after that, both my wife and I had dreams of her. Various themes but mostly her running free and feeling happy. Could be wishful thinking. Could it be her saying goodbye and letting us know it all turned out for the best. Rational side says “no way”. Emotional side says “you never know”.

Yesterday, my wife mentioned that she hadn’t had any dreams about Dolly and neither had I. Maybe that triggered something in my head because I did have a dream about her last night. It was weird in other ways because we were at a house that I can see vividly but it wasn’t ours. I remember letting her and another dog out but I couldn’t really see the other dog. At one point, my niece and nephew showed up but not as their current college aged selfs but as younger kids. They were chasing Dolly and she was running from them as we were trying to get her in the house. That really never happened because Dolly wasn’t one who liked to be chased. It scared her but I didn’t sense or feel fear in the dream. I just felt happiness. In my dream mind, I interpreted that as coming from her.

So is that my self-conscious mind trying to ease any lingering guilt from the decision to have her put to sleep. Is that a message from Dolly telling me that she’s happy where she is now. Or was it just a random series of things firing in my brain taking memories and reshaping in strange new ways. For me, I’m going to believe it was from Dolly since we really can’t prove which option is correct. It is all a matter of what you believe.

And I chose to tell that here because I work with a bunch of scientists and many of them are rational types. Probably not really open to this type of conversation.