I don’t dream much anymore, but I do snore. I feel the telltale ache in my throat when I wake up but I draw a blank as to where my mind went all night. At some point, ageing means you start to lose more than you gain, but this feels like an unfair trade to make before I’ve hit 30. I was well prepared to give up my high metabolism, not sleeping fantasies, but I doubt my concerns would have stopped wild childhood dreams from becoming far less frequent and far less amiable. I noticed the change much too late. Sleep for sleep’s sake had been the priority for a while now and getting enough of it concerned me more than the content of my dreams or lack thereof. When I dream of something fantastical today, the infrequent occurrence smacks of horror like Hereditary on bath salts while even midday imaginations of how fame and fortune will be suddenly thrust upon me slip into oblivion before I can set the first scene. I used to share my dreams with delight, but nowadays if I forget them before I’ve hit breakfast, it’s a relief.
Before our brains are fully developed, we spend countless nights in those sleepscapes yet we aren’t guaranteed expertise on the matter. Today’s oneirologists can explain the neurological mechanisms that produce dreams but we still know comparatively little about their purpose. Nonetheless, there is a common thread of understanding that dreams may not be entirely separated from who we are and how we live. Like Fernando Pessoa said, “Dreaming is the only thing we have that’s really ours.” Sigmund Freud probably wouldn’t disagree. Our nighttime visions fascinated the father of psychoanalysis who tried to unravel how these fantasies were just our unconscious finally taking centre stage. While his body of work is far from unassailable (see: Oedipus complex, penis envy, the incident wherein he recommended nasal surgery to solve menstrual pain 2. Although giving Freud the credit here would do a disservice to countless Indigenous communities from the Americas to Africa that have seen dreams as a critical source of self- and cultural knowledge long before he was a twinkle in his parents’ eyes.
It’s not groundbreaking then to say our dreams are mirror of ourselves, perhaps a funhouse mirror. Men tend to dream of physical aggression more often than women, but women dream of more negative emotions than men in their adulthood3. However, what does it say when we can’t dream as often or when the dreams we have reflect less hope and more fear? When it comes to the richness and creativity of our childhood dreams, some studies have pointed out that this is not uncommon to change over time.4
“I dreamed I lost you guys,” My sister shared one morning. We don’t live together anymore, so these accounts are shared over the phone while she’s walking home from work and I’m cooking too much pasta for one person. Her voice is matter-of-fact and the details of the dream never seem important. It’s not the first time either of us has recounted a bad dream and there’s this unaddressed thread across our nightmares: loss. When we were younger, we talked about how we dreamed about being part of our favorite movies. Now we mention night terrors about the death of our loved ones in passing. Our worlds change, so do we and so do our dreams.
Most people experience a life cycle of dreams but there’s nothing in the research that says we can’t ever experience the same vivid fantasies like our slumbering seven year old selves did. While that’s comforting for days when existence becomes banal, I am less and less convinced about the need to return to my younger self’s dream worlds. In that black box of functioning, that ambiguity of a sleeping world, I wonder about a more hopeful interpretation of the infrequency of our dreams in adulthood. I wonder if dreaming isn’t lost and isn’t something stolen but instead has become superfluous. If, as adults we have the propensity to capture the complexity of existence, the challenges we could face, the real life challenges that could create a nightmare of our real circumstances, then maybe our dreams need not be so fantastical because we realize there is already a fantasy in the everyday.
I’ve had nightmares and I’ve had weeks of dreamless nights, where one day ends and another begins with just that black screen of sleep in the interim. And while a part of me misses the way I could dream with abandon – When the sunset hits summer green hills and deep blue skies stretch for miles and miles, well that’s like a dream that spilled into real life. Some days life is so gorgeous that I don’t dare to blink because I want to keep it all for a dream I might have later that night.
Small dreams satisfy me more often than they used to. It’s not so bad.
