I believe that having
enough hours of sleep is really important for our minds because it
keeps us alive and energetic to learn new things and gives us the
energy that we will be using to think and analyze in every situation
that we encounter. It helps us to think clearly and positively, and
we don’t easily get weary when it comes to solving our problems. We
seem to become more productive when we had enough sleep compared to
when we didn’t have enough of it. But is it really the resting
state that contributes to our good performance or is it the dreaming
part that really works?
While I’m browsing
the internet for some information about dreams, a particular article
really caught my attention. The “Dreams Make You Smarter,More Creative, Studies Suggest” by Rachel Kaufman of
National Geographic News states that dreaming may improve a
person’s memory, develop his creativity, and may help him to better
plan or even predict the future. In a study which was featured in the
article, Sara Mednick conducted an experiment where they
proved that those people who had REM (rapid eye movement)
sleep which happens after an hour or more from the time a person
slept, can easily analyze and be able to relate one idea to another
even though they do not seem to have any connection at all. Also, she
found out that REM doesn’t only boost a person’s memory but also
a person’s creativity in using a word to a different context.
It didn't occur to me
that dreaming would be a possible reason why people who rested enough
become smarter. The only thing I know which is related to this
subject is when a person reviews after having enough sleep,
especially in the morning, would be able to retain everything that he
learned and to understand more clearly the topic. I didn't think that
it maybe due to his dreaming in a very vivid state (or REM sleep)
that actually helped him to become wiser.
Another thing that I
really look up to the sleeping state is its ability to strengthen a
person's immune system. Every time I have a sickness, what I usually
do is to take a rest, unmindful of the exams that I will be taking in
the next days which will only worsen my condition and give me
additional stress. But now that I have read an article about the
possibility that dreams can be an enhancer to the intellectual side
of a person, I now arrive at a not so intelligent guess that maybe
dreams have also something to do with the health stature of a person.
Maybe taking a rest will not be that effective without the dreams
that come hand in hand with it. That sounds really strange, right?
But sometimes, great discoveries are the offspring of some very
unusual ideas!
The article also
states that the memories retained in our minds (which keep on coming
back in our dreams) and continuously being enhanced as they
repeatedly being pictured in our subconscious can help us to
formulate a plan for the future: “Boosted by deep sleep, an
improved memory may have yet one more benefit: helping you
imagine—and better plan for—the future.”
Often, our dreams keep
on recalling those problems and struggles that we are currently
facing and also distort them as if our minds begin to predict the
probable outcomes of these events even if they seem so vague,
unrealistic, fictitious, and so out of control. Sometimes our dreams
give us hints on how to maneuver those circumstances in our lives but
oftentimes they seem so inapplicable, and we come up with the
conclusion that maybe those advices were so symbolic, that they are
the answers that nature doesn’t want to reveal to us directly, and
puzzles that only ourselves can decrypt.
As what the Harvard
psychiatrist, Daniel
Schacter, said in an interview with the
National Geographic News, “After all, dreams are a different way of
recombining aspects of past experience," dreams really keep on
reminding us of our past. As what I can recall from Sigmund
Freud’s theory about dreams, he said that some
events that we see in our dreams have already happened during our
early years, when we were still young. That is why sometimes we see
people whom we couldn’t recall that we have met in our entire life.
Freud concluded that those images that we see, including those
strange people and familiar things and places, have already took
place in the past, that is, during our childhood.
Dreams’ capability
to activate people’s minds and to help persons plan ahead might
really become very questionable to us. We might only neglect this
information and just allow ourselves to dream again, ignore and
forget; dream, ignore, and forget; and the cycle continues. It might
seem to us that this idea is not founded on firm bases and might only
mislead people. After all, who will labor so much on giving too much
attention to his dreams and then find out that it takes years to
decipher dreams’ codes? But what if the thing you deciphered can
change your life? That the idea which reality provides you everyday
is just the 0.01% of what the decoded hint can give you? That dreams
can possibly enhance a person’s capabilities and make predictions
for his future? That these possibilities can become probabilities
(more possible possibilities) and eventually become realities? Let’s
dream and let’s see!
Moreover, here are some
questions that I wanted to be answered as I pursue this research in
order to satisfy my curiosity:
- Is there any real life situation wherein a person’s dream has eventually happened afterwards?
- They say that the things that always occupy our minds are the usual scenarios that penetrate our dreams. Then, if I always think that I wanted to excel in this particular subject, and I begin to dream about it, would my dream help me how to excel on that subject? Would my dream give me the answer?
- Is there an instance wherein you encounter a place, a person, a name, or a thing in your dream that are not really familiar to you, and then you find out that they really exist and are only within your reach?
- Why do we easily forget our dreams?
- How can we be able to interpret our dreams?
- Can we really recall things and events in our dreams that we have already forgotten in our conscious mind?
- Can I choose the dream that I will have?
Here are some sources
which I think might help me to figure out the above questions:
- National Geographic News
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