What’s in a Dream?

Everybody tells me I look good, but I sure as shootin’ don’t feel it.

And last night I dreamed I was dying. That was not pleasant. Took me a very long time to get back to sleep.

What is it with dreams? Do they foretell the future? Near future, or distant future (everybody dies)? Is there some mischievous imp lurking in your subconscious mind, who tries to freak you out?

I guess I’ll sit outside for a while. Maybe clear my head.

With the rare exception of certain events involving prophets of the One True God, dreams are fragments of information we take in. The inputs could be some profound conversation, or something we barely see out of the corner of our eye.

A database is a structured store of data. Even if you know nothing about computers, you have probably used a database, in the form of a phone book. A phone book works because there is structure: a first name, a last name, an address, a phone number. Our brains contain vast amounts of information and, not unlike a database, it is only as useful as the way it is organized.

For example, there’s a data record for my next door neighbor and it contains the name of the person, a description of the house, and perhaps some events related to that location and/or the person living there. Once, nearly 20 years ago, a temporary corral was setup in my neighbor’s yard because they were looking after a horse. That’s a data point related to the data record for that home, but unrelated to the current occupant.

Now, imagine all of the people, places and things you know about and how you mentally track that data. If the neighbor sells their yellow car and buys a blue car, you subconsciously update that record, accordingly.

But how about all the tiny scraps of information that flit through your consciousness every day. What will be connected to a data record and thereby be retrievable, and what will be deemed meaningless and, while it remains in the brain, it is unlikely to be retrieved because it’s unconnected to any meaningful memory.

That’s where dreams come in. In our sleep, the brain is said to sort through data taken in, and tries to determine the significance of each sight, sound, experience, etc. in order to classify it and to try to make sense of it. Sometimes these data fragments are a series of non-sequiturs, which make no sense, whatsoever. So a dream can include an ice cream cone, a deadly snake, the voice of your second grade teacher and an ad for a Veg-o-matic, because these are random scraps of information.

When something is on our mind, it is likely to surface in a dream. You are dealing with some serious health issues, so it’s understandable that you might have thoughts related to death. Your brain is working to categorize your thoughts and as my father told me many years ago, dreams are thoughts that occur in our sleep.

I wouldn’t take any of this as a sign from God. Unless He has a job for you to do, chances are He isn’t going to start sending you predictions. All any of us can deal with is the present, and while an orderly life requires planning, it’s far to easy to get ahead of ourselves and try to control things we cannot possibly control. If I were to offer any advice, it would be to focus on your next step, something you can control, and I’d work towards getting your hip fixed.