Good or bad, but I don't dream much.
Oooooops! I forgot!
I try not to say it that way or I'm guaranteed a lecture on how we all dream, it's just that I don't, for the most part, remember mine.
Let's start again.
Good or bad, I don't usually remember my dreams. Even if I have, on occasion, they must not have been very interesting because I can't remember the content of a single one. Some people apparently have vivid dreams just about every night, and remember them clearly. Betsy's daughter-in-law, or daughter-out-law as we refer to her as she lives with Betsy's daughter in Georgia where they will probably never sanction gay marriage, is amazing. She can spend hours recounting every dream from every night down to the minutest detail. Understandably, she takes some interest in the supposed significance of the content of dreams. I, equally understandably, do not!
Good or bad, there was a time when this absence of dream memories changed, for a while. I had to take prednisone for a few years. Now that is not good, definitely bad, in fact downright ugly. I am off it now and hope it stays that way. But one of the side-effects when I was taking it, was dreams so vivid they were more like hallucinations; I remembered them equally vividly. Of course I don't think you can really use the word hallucination for things that occur in your sleep, but it's how I think of them, simply because they were so very real. No, they were beyond real in a way I can't describe. I have never done drugs so I can't compare, but perhaps that's what a "good trip" on hallucinogens is like. If so, I can see why people get hooked. Or maybe most ordinary everyday, or I should say everynight, dreams are like that for most people. I simply don't know. Mine were never scary, nor even weird. They were terribly mundane, and very short.
I would walk along a beach, or in a wood, or drive on I70 or pick flowers from the garden. I don't know how long they lasted, in my memories they were maybe a minute at the most. But so clear: blindingly bright. They are the only thing I that I regret the loss of from no longer taking prednisone, and that one regret will certainly not send me back on it.
Good or bad, I rarely daydream either. As a child I suppose I conjured up possible futures the way most children do. I think, though, that, even at a young age, I knew at some level of consciousness that my future was to be different from what I was currently experiencing. There was something in it I couldn't see, around some hidden corner, or should I say in some dark closet, that I was happy enough not to see too clearly. So I never was much of a daydreamer. I tended rather to roll along, letting life take me where it may. In some ways I guess that's bad, not picturing your future, not having goals and really very little direction. But I ended up with a wonderful life so it can't have done me much harm. And these days we are encouraged by spiritual leaders to live in the moment and in fact not to daydream, so perhaps I accidentally fell into good habits!
Anyway, there's little to be done about any of it, good or bad. In my seventies, I don't see myself suddenly spending hours daydreaming of my future. And there is no way, as far as I know, to make myself remember dreams for the first time in my life. Except for some drug-induced method, that is, and in my seventies I don't quite see myself taking that route either.
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams," said Eleanor Roosevelt, a woman I greatly admire and usually agree with. But I have to say I have managed to live a life just about as good as any I could imagine, without the influence of dreams: good, bad, or ugly.
© November 2014
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