Dream On

Dreams are a very interesting concept. In a recent comment, Shannon posed this question: if you have a dream, and there is a person or place in your dream that you've never seen, does that place or person exist?

Over the years, my wife has asked, or at least wondered aloud, the same basic question a few of times.

Well, I am always up for giving my opinion on anything of a vague nature; so here we go.

First of all, I ask that you clear you mind for a moment. Picture yourself on a mountaintop with a gentle breaze blowing. In the meadow just below, there is a young fawn frollicking about. Seriously, stop reading for a minute and picture the scene.

OK, now that we are all warm and fuzzy inside, let's continue.
If you played along, let me ask you a couple questions.
1) Was the place you imagined a real place?
2) Was the deer you imagined a real deer?

I'd say that our mind can construe pretty much whatever we want it to, real or not. If you know of a mountaintop that over looks a meadow, you very possibly thought of that. Otherwise, you impovised. You know what a mountaintop looks like and you know what a meadow looks like, so you created your own imaginary place.

You know what a deer looks like because you have seen one in person or in a picture or video, so you can imagine one. In this case you are probably picturing, to the best of your recollection, a "real" deer.

I think the same holds true for people. Even before any of us are of grade school age, we have seen thousands and thousands of people. When we dream, we can either recall (subconsciously) that grocery clerk from 1985 or maybe someone you walked past in the airport somewhere along the way.

Now if I would have told you to think of a deer hobbling about on a broken leg, you could have, but unless you have actually seen a deer with a broken leg before, your mind is improvising again.

In this same way, I believe your mind can "adjust" or even combine these stored images. For instance you should be able to picture in your mind what I would look like with a beard, even though none of you have never seen me with one. It's not a real beard and everyone will have their own interpretation, but your mind can create it.

So, in summary, I say that no, not all of the people in our dreams are necessarily real, but I think our mind has created the images from a real person or persons somewhere in your past, be it recent or distant.

Also, we definitely dream of some real places, but we can also make up what ever surroundings we want or 'need' for our dream.

There you have it, another worthless opinion :)