As I drove my son to daycare this morning, he informed me that his stuffed elephant, Ellie was real. "She is?" I responded. "What makes you say that?" "Last night, I had a dream, and she was talking in it. That makes her real."
Perhaps, I should have set him straight and told him that Ellie is a stuffed toy, nothing more. Maybe I should have explained that just because we dream something, it doesn’t make it real. But I didn’t.
Instead, I got to thinking about dreams. How they do seem real. Have you ever been in the middle of a really wonderful dream, only to be awakened by a noisy bird, or (worse) the annoying alarm clock? How many times have you tried to silence the interruption quickly so as to return to the dream and discover what would happen next? But, alas, often the only remnants in your memory are wisps of emotions the dream caused you to feel. Rarely can you remember the actual details.
It’s like having the doorbell buzz or the phone ring right in the middle of a great movie—but one you can’t pause and return to later. There is one difference, however. A movie rarely seems real. Why is that? Maybe, because it is the work of other people. The writer, director and actors are responsible for creating what happens in the movie. It doesn’t matter whether or not you would prefer if Dorothy stays in Oz. No matter how many times you watch, she will proclaim "there’s no place like home" and return to Kansas. The Terminator will always be back, and, although they met in college, Harry and Sally will never get together until they spend years playing games with each other. Whether you like it or not, someone else makes the rules when it comes to the movies.
A dream is much more personal because it is completely written by you. You are in control of what happens, from beginning to end. It’s easy to forget that because it occurs in your subconscious, but it is your mind creating the plot of the dream and no one else’s.
Certainly, events that happen in our "awake" life affect the story lines, but how we deal with those events in our dreams is entirely up to us. And we can be so much more than we perceive ourselves to be in real life! Where we may feel weak or timid when awake, in our dreams we have the power and confidence to confront any challenge. The impossible is possible. A famous Walt Disney commercial says "a dream is a wish you heart makes, when you’re fast asleep." Dreams create the life we want to lead in our imagination. No wonder we are so anxious to hit the snooze button and continue our fantasy for a while!
But, does it have to be fantasy? Why does the best part of us have to be reserved for when we are asleep? Paul MacCready, a scientist and inventor best known for his inventions in human-powered flight credits many of his big successes to daydreaming: "The only big ideas I've ever had have come from daydreaming, but modern life keeps people from daydreaming. Every moment of the day your mind is being occupied, controlled, by someone else—at school, at work, watching television." In other words, the conscious world is controlling our thoughts when we are awake, not the subconscious.
If we want for something to happen, why can’t we use some of the creative power that creates our vivid night dreams to make them come true when we are awake? If we allow ourselves, we can write the story of our life to meet our expectations. As Henry David Thoreau said: "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Okay, I admit that stuffed animals will probably never talk. And granted, just like an action movie, our life’s story line may make twists and turns we don’t expect. But unlike the movies, the control over the ending is not up to other people. And, although we may not know today how the story will end, we do know one thing. It can far exceed our wildest dreams.
