Blog
Dream On
Feb
I dream almost every night, but that wasn’t always the case. Before I moved on from paid work, I rarely dreamed – at least knowingly. Maybe 3-5 times in a year. Now, it is almost every night. I don’t know the significance of the timing. It was as if a switch flipped the night of my retirement.
I’m lucky that I enjoy my dreams, although they are fuzzy even just a few minutes after waking.
My dreams are filled with adventures in different time periods, from the Middle Ages to the present. Rarely do they contain anything that defies the natural laws, such as gravity.
Recently, I had an unusual experience with all this dream stuff, particularly with one dream. The dream involved some previous period, about two hundred years ago. I am rarely the central character. I’m there but unnoticed. I’m not floating above or hiding. Somebody had decided to make 365 jigsaw puzzles depicting something significant for every day of the year. So that meant a one-off collection of these puzzles was lost over the years.
I recalled these details during my waking hours, not as a dream but as something I read about, perhaps in National Geographic magazine. I thought it was real. It wasn’t noteworthy, so I didn’t mention it to anyone.
I thought about the history of jigsaw puzzles and thought a search for where this collection would be an enjoyable adventure. Then, it began to dawn on me that I had dreamt it all!
This wouldn’t be the first time this happened. I had one dream before my retirement, and that part of it involved the death of a friend. In my waking hours, I thought he had passed. Much to my shock, surprise, and relief, my path crossed his path, and all was revealed.
I can usually go back to a previous dream and continue my adventure. I’ve had a lot of practice with aging-old-man middle-of-the-night behaviours. With practice, most nights, I could return repeatedly to the storyline I was engaged in.
So, last night, I went to bed to dream about searching for the collection. I observed others finding a few pieces on their last dig before giving up. These few jigsaw pieces meant the motherlode had to be nearby. The searchers found this at the edge of an ancient garbage dump. With technology, they were able to complete over 200-day puzzles. Then I woke up!
Please give this a bit of a think. Do you dream, and are you able to recall your dreams? Are they scary, fun, or defying natural laws such as gravity? Can you return to pick up the story?
I am curious about your thoughts. Please comment below with your bit of a think.
Photo by Benjamin Sow on Unsplash
If you enjoyed The Blog, please share it with others. Thanks.
And my thanks to St. Albert’s 50+ Activity Centre for making this Blog possible.
Volunteer Blogger
glenn.walmsley@icloud.com
I dream much more at this stage of my life than when I was young. I’m even better at remembering many of the details. One thing is for sure – my dreams have definitely evolved to a whole new level!
I’ve been experiencing what many people might describe as lucid dreaming, but my dreams don’t feel like dreams. They feel very real. They can occur just after I fall asleep, in the middle of the night, or just before I wake up.
I can also initiate the “dream” in my mind’s eye, (during wakefulness, if I am focused. What’s interesting is that I am fully aware of being aware and I can turn it on and turn it off. Just like a television.
The “scenes” are incredibly vivid and detailed. It’s almost like peering into someone else’s real life. That includes seeing very clear scenes of their home and personal belongings. Think watching a movie, but it doesn’t last much longer than 30-40 seconds.
When I first started experiencing this, (7 years ago) I couldn’t make any sense of it. I remember doing several google searches to see if I could find a scientific explanation. I didn’t find anything. Lucid dreaming is probably the closest explanation I’ll find. I was never frightened by this strange phenomenon. I was intrigued.
I see everything in these scenes – all of the characters, just like in a “movie.” For example, I saw a woman in her kitchen cooking and serving dinner to her children. I saw a postman delivering mail. The “scenes” don’t appear as images. They’re actual people moving about and doing all the things regular people do in real life.
To provide some context to this: the “dream scene” is always set in the same time period, the1940s. The clothing they wear and the cars they drive are typical for that time period.
I’m intrigued by this experience. There’s also a kind of entertaining aspect to it because I’m in control. It’s allowed me to explore the relationship between consciousness and self. This is a very different experience than actual dreams that are nonsensical. I’m not being chased by someone or trying to escape from something, like in my childhood dreams. Those dream frights are mostly gone.