Dreams

Too mysterious to understand? Too ephemeral to discover and analyze? Yes, and no.

Dreams have always been interesting because of how little we know about them. There isn't any scientific consensus on what dreams are and why do we have them. Still, that's not enough to stop me from trying to tame the unknown.

What was my previous experience?

As a child I had some repeating nightmares, I watched some videos about lucid dreaming and all that, but there's not much other memories that could help me start off my exploration. Also, I rarely had any dreams. I remember wanting to note my dreams some years ago and after 2 years or so I had no more than 4 dreams written down. Not a lot.

As a generally curious person I've watched some videos about lucid dreaming and dreams overall, I noted a few of my dreams over the years, but it led to nothing. Then how did my most recent attempt began and why is it interesting?

More promising attempt started one year ago, when me and my friend group created a special chat to share our dreams with each other, which made me feel obliged to note everything down. It was April of 2021. Just after a few days of creating the chat, by pure luck, I had a huge dream. It was like nothing I experienced so far. It was a whole, detailed and comprehensive story. It intrigued me. I remember waking up and noting the dream by hand for longer than an hour.

Then I had a dream every now and then, nothing too exciting. It continued for about half a year.

Strangely enough, one day something changed. I still cannot understand what happened despite my best effort. I just started having a ton of dreams. A ton of them, compared to what I used to have.

I just don't know. It was not gradual. Some higher being snapped their fingers and there I was with a bunch of new data-points to analyze.

I couldn't let it go to waste. That's my overall mindset recently. When life gives you an opportunity - take it. I'm tired of having regrets.

As before, I transcribed as much information as I could remember. I could finally train my memory to let my brain know that I don't want to forget these dreams. They. Are. Important.

A change came with me switching from paper notebook to the electronic one. It's because writing it all by hand was too time consuming and quite annoying responsibility on most of the mornings. And now I had a whole database.

Experimental data

What you're about to see is a list of dates and tags from my dreams for the past 2 months. The tags are there to roughly find the dream that I'm looking for in case I need it and also to easier find repeating motives.

A quick side-note: The blurred tags are either someone's initials or names, just for the sake of privacy. Anyways, the people that appear in my dreams are so random that sometimes the dreams themselves remind me of someone's existence. It means that someone's presence in my dreams doesn't mean a lot, solely based on tags.

So you can see on your own now that it's unlikely that I made all that up. Even if the tags are similar, the topics, environment and events vary a lot. And please treat the tags really loosely. I still figure it all out and I don't have any good system for making the tags. I mostly write whatever comes to my mind, without being too strict.

Why do dreams exist?

Enough of practice for now. Let's do some analysis now to try to put it all together, instead of just observing.

What are dreams? Why do they even exist?

To answer these questions, I'd start from the very beginning. Namely, sleep. And here we have a bunch of facts to work with.

Sleep has benefits and there is no doubt about it. You can read about it everywhere, how brain during sleep performs memory-consolidation moving memories from short to long term memory, how it gets rid of the toxins, how it replays the events to figure out what is important and what isn't, how the growth hormone is released for our bodies to regenerate.

For simplification, I like to think that during sleep we regenerate, strengthen our memories and then connect some dots. In this exact order because the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase of sleep is the one where we dream the most, where our brains try to puzzle new information out. I used the word puzzle on purpose - People that slept over a pattern-recognition puzzle, were 2.5 times more likely to figure it out over the people who either spent a whole day or night awake.

Where: Stage 1 - REM phase, Stage 4 - Deep, regenerative sleep

Back on track. Sleep = Regeneration -> Strengthening memories -> Connecting the dots

So at the beginning our bodies mostly focus on regeneration, then if there is time left, our brain can do other beneficial tasks. Regeneration is merely a priority. For what? For survival.

Evolution is the foundation that I rely on to understand why organisms work and how they work. Why don't our brains just cease functioning to preserve energy, while our body rests? It's because the energy spent is worth it. It has to be true.

Cool, cool. But what dreams have to do with it?

This is all absolutely fascinating. The problem is, where is a place for dreams in that?

My thought as a kid was that of course dreams also give us some advantages because otherwise, we also wouldn't spend energy on that. Turns out, it's not so simple.

Surprisingly enough, animals also have dreams. In one experiment scientists "removed the sleep paralysis" from a sleeping cat. I cannot find a video that I got this from, but for some reason I remembered the fact and a little bit of googling has lead me to this video:

It means that humans are not too special for having dreams. It also slightly suggests that dreams are in fact important for our survival.

But, some scientists argue that the cleanup process during REM sleep phase stimulates some neurons, more or less randomly. And that dreams are just a sensation of our brain trying to make sense out of the random stimuli. And it messes up my whole thought process. So it's possible that dreams don't disappear with evolution not because they are beneficial, but because they are a neutral byproduct of beneficial mechanisms. Wow.

However... It does not explain why there is so much repeating motives. It does not explain why some people appear in my dreams a looooot. A whole lot. More than it would be reasonable to think that it's just a chance.

There were people that I thought a lot about that appeared in my dreams and as soon as I stopped thinking about them, they also stopped appearing in my dreams. But the memories are there, right? From time to time they should be present, somewhereee.

Okay.

But there were people that appeared a lot in my dreams, that I never thought about. I had only few memories with them, nothing else.

And also there is a person that I have the most memories with, that barely appears in my dreams. Like maybe 2 times in my database.

For me, random noise just doesn't explain it.

My hypothesis

For these reasons, I came up with my own way to piece it all together.

There is some variability in dreams. Some things are truly random, but it's because our brains are just complicated nets of mutually dependent nodes. It's not a well organized database.

What our brain does is exploring itself, for the sake of survival. To see the possible options. To prepare for the future - anticipating potential hardships.

Living organisms are antifragile - they constantly anticipate what might go wrong and they prepare for it. Preparing for the future perfectly is impossible, so you have to be prepared for as much as possible, while spending your resources in a reasonable manner.

If you start weightlifting and you apply stress to your muscles, with time they will not simply strengthen themselves to withstand that stress from the past. They will grow, so that they can withstand even greater stress than they were exposed to.

Biological organisms don't adapt. They overshoot, anticipating increase of the environmental factor. If it doesn't increase - the system goes to an equilibrium.

Going back to the topic: Dreams focus on the negatives. And that strongly suggests, that they have a purpose.

What is more, I have my personal experience to back this up. I have experience of my friends to back this up.

For the past 70 days, according to my database, I don't think I had a single positive dream. I had a semi-positive dream that revolved around the topic that I'm scared of, even though it's positive for others.

Even all those positive sounding tags, don't describe any pleasant events.

My dream from 25th December 2021: Oh yes, we fought demons, and then we were surprised by a huge demon on our backs. Yes, I was a hero there because I was the only one that managed to escape and I sealed off the gate, so the demons couldn't escape. But the whole dream is a spectacular defeat. A disaster. A massacre.

I didn't wake up happy. And that was one of these better-sounding dreams.

Dreams are meaningful, in my opinion. My dreams are usually about a struggle. I just struggle. I try to survive. I fight. I explore, while trying to survive. In my recent dream from 5th March I get to the treasure in the form of some crystals, but I gather them mid-fight. I don't just achieve my goals. The dreams are not happy. They resemble real world in one way or another.

My dreams are about big events, when in real life I'm still scared of being in a spotlight. My dreams are about ostracism, when in real life I'm, unsurprisingly, not too fond of being rejected.

I have some wholesome experiences, some nice memories or thoughts. The "random noise" doesn't seem to care a whole lot about them.

For good times we don't have to prepare, but we do need for bad times.

Dreams are meaningful.

Completely different question is whether it's important to remember them. Do we get the benefits of dreams, without remembering them? Most likely yes. Otherwise, it would be weird for animals to have dreams, it would also we strange that most people barely remember anything upon waking up. I still have that problem, despite remembering more than others.

Danger

Then. Is it good that I remember that much or no?

I've heard people say that they don't want to remember their dreams because it's not something too pleasant.

At first I didn't understand, but after experiencing it myself, now I know.

Still, I would never want to stop it. Even if dreams are completely random noise from our brain, I'm still interested in knowing what's in my brain. It's too exciting, too valuable an information to ignore it. I want to know the truth, even if it's unpleasant. It's also not like I have a choice. I'm just glad.

I think of my brain as a separate entity and dreams is probably the best way to get to know what your brain thinks about your life, struggles, perspectives, fears.

Now what?

Bros, sleep well (if possible). Have lots of dreams.

I slept way more in January then in February and you can clearly see how many more dreams I had.

And then confirm my hypothesis. Or deny it, if you want to. *rolling eyes*

As I'm writing these words, It's getting late. Today was a fantastic day, tomorrow will also be great. I wonder what I'll dream about today. I kinda miss that one beautiful river in the middle of desert.

Good night

Edit: No river this time. Just a boring dream about breaking my phone. Maybe next time.