We all dream while asleep. Most of us do not remember that we dreamt at all. Of those who remember, many are hardly able to reconstruct the details and sequence of their dreams. This leaves less than a sizeable number of us who are reliably able to narrate our dreams. Our brains try not to encode details of dreams in our memories, so it doesn’t get clogged with irrelevances.
Humans, and even animals, dream as part of the brain healing and recalibration process while our bodies lie motionless, asleep. What we dream of at any given time is a function of several physical and mental factors which, many times, we rationalize to give our dreams implausible meanings and hold onto them.
At any given time, we fall asleep, our state of mind influences our dreams. So do our sleeping circumstances and the environment in which we sleep. If our body is unwell, for instance, headache, or such other mild or severe illness, we are likely to experience dreams or nightmares that could be very distressing, sometimes laced with violence and death. It could be our ‘death’ or that of our loved one, or even someone remote.
Sometimes, our dreams are influenced by our sleeping environment. If we sleep in a stuffy environment, deprived of sufficient oxygen, we are more likely to have nightmares, including illusionary choking effects by close relatives trying to strangulate us. A colder sleeping environment than we are accustomed to will probably result in our dreaming of being drowned by our supposed enemy or seemingly the devil.
Falling asleep in a cozy environment, more beautiful and relaxing than we are familiar with, could give us déjà vu dreams. We could be celebrating our electoral victory or that of a loved one, or even of someone remote to us, as governor, or as senator.
In essence, there are many circumstantial factors that cause us to dream the kind of dreams that make us “a Chosen!". In fact our brain programs us to experience nightmares to help nudge us awake when the physical factors in our sleeping environment changes to life threatening levels. Unfortunately, due to ages-held traditions, folklore, and written works we read, we have held dreams and nightmares to affect and control our daily lives by giving them myths. These long held beliefs have negatively impacted our physical realities and world views, including our relationships with our loved ones, colleagues and/or communities.
Dreams we may have had, no thanks to the effects of illness, or our state of mind or our environmental situation, have been held to be manifest and used to slander those who meant us no harm or have no thoughts of us at all.
Our dreams during sleep are not real. They are illusions, concocted by our brain and given images based on our experiences of the past. None should be used as yardstick for any physical occurrence that happens afterwards.
If a dream appears to have happened, it did so by coincidence. The possibility that we dreamt today, and it occurred tomorrow or even in a year’s time, is within the realm of probability. In other words, whether we dreamt or not, or acted on our dream or not, what happened would still have happened as if we never dreamt at all. Put it like this: any event that occurred would still have occurred with or without our dream. The other way is also true. Any event that didn’t occur would still not have occurred with our dream.
Our universe and, of course, our daily lives are ruled by probabilities and science. Together, they form the laws of nature, which we individually experience mostly as coincidences. There is nothing infinitesimal in nature that can occur that can not occur within a given time and place. Once it occurs, it can coincide with a dream someone had now or in a remote past. When such coincidence happens, We are made to believe that it is a product of our dream; that our dream foretold us of the event. Often, we deliberately omit to interrogate the cause of the dream, some of which are results of depression, intoxication, stress, restlessness, hunger etc.
There are over eight (8) billion people in our world. Assuming only about two (2) billion of us dream and remember, in a year, there would have been hundreds of billions of dreams of varying dimensions and interpretations waiting to be fulfilled. If all of us who dream and remember were to put to effects actions to realise or prevent our dreams from occurring, the world will become very chaotic. There will be lawlessness on the streets, crimes will thrive. People will abstain from their emergency jobs, planes will be grounded. There will be power outages, banks will shut down, diseases will spread, etc. There will be confusion everywhere. People will die.
Most of us look at our dreams from our own personal space and experiences only, forgetting that the world is populated by the other billions of people who equally dream simultaneously with us. As one of us may have dreamt today that Abuja suffered terrorist attacks, one of us elsewhere may also have dreamt that Abuja is in a celebratory mood. Either of the dreams or something in-between is bound to be correct. And when either happens, it is not because the incident was foretold by a dreamer or either of the dreamers. It will be mere happenstance.
Reliance on dreams does not belong to the age of science. Controlling our lives by dreams have caused us several setbacks. People have suffered untold consequences, including pains of death because someone dreamt. A loved one dies of medically verifiable circumstances, but that becomes irrelevant because someone dreamt that he was spiritually murdered by some other loved ones.
In Africa, in particular, a lot of people have been labelled sorcerers, witches, occultists, ritualists, etc. because someone dreamt. Many have cancelled or cut short valuable trips because someone dreamt. Many have failed to visit their communities or associates or take responsibility for their loved ones because someone dreamt. In fact, dreams have cost Africa conflicts and deaths. A continent of endemic diseases and poverty that breeds nightmares, relies on them to judge one another.
Our world is not governed by dreams. Neither do dreams influence our successes or failures. The dreams we dream while asleep remain dreams and nothing more. The only dream that is a reality is the one we have while fully awake; dreams that come by meditations.
It is the dreams of people who were fully awake that have bettered societies; dreams of scientists, engineers, doctors, philosophers, and more. Our overwhelming discoveries, inventions and wealth came about by painstaking meditations and the experimentations of those who where fully awake. In other words, every invention came by deliberate, open-eyed dreams backed by calculations and experiments.
Therefore, in the New Year, by all means, let us DREAM DREAMS. Not when we are asleep, but while fully awake and in solitude. Let our dreams or someone else’s dream while asleep not be obstacles to our aspirations. Instead, let us set our goals from the dreams and meditations we have while fully awake!
Azibaola Robert
An entrepreneur, lawyer and a Fellow of Nigerian Society of Engineers is social-thinker, creative writer and a practical hands-on personality in numerous fields of endeavour.
YouTube: Azibaola Robert (@azibaolarobert)
Instagram: azibaolarobert
Comments