The Grasshopper gave me a puzzling message to reflect on: “You can’t dream without memories.”

Did you ever notice that dreams are loosely based on experiences that you’ve had (memories)?

Most dreams I have are like patchwork quilts. They hopscotch around and have bizarre twists and turns but are loosely based on experiences that I’ve had.

We may have met someone a week ago that had unusual eyebrows. We shouldn’t be too surprised that unusual eyebrows show up in a dream. Our dream may mix eyebrows with an experience that we had 10 days later and tie the two together.

Many moons ago I was introduced to the concept that we live our lives by reference. We’re always referring back to try and make sense of something unfamiliar that’s right in front of us now. We use past experience to try and figure out the present.

Dreams are no different, except for the fact that they’re a lot less sequential.

I find dreams to be an escape valve for emotions that are bubbling below the surface. We may choose not to deal with the emotions in our awake state, but the dream machine has no such option. It just stirs up lots of divergent stuff and sees what escapes.

Thankfully we don’t have to deal with all that angst in our everyday waking life. Our dreaming apparatus takes care of a portion of it while we sleep.

Some people attempt to make sense of their dreams and sometimes we can, but for the most part they are a confusing mix of disjointed events.

The takeaway here is this: Not all your dreams will make sense but they will make your life a lot less scary, because when you dream you let off some steam.

All the best,

John