Dreams

I usually dream in Technicolor :)

When I was younger, I used to spend a major chunk of my morning tea time narrating my dreams to my family. Mother would remind me that I have school to get ready for, while Father always indulged me. My dreams have always been vivid and I am mostly able to remember the minutest of details. Recurring dreams and some terrible nightmares are fairly fresh in my mind even today and having shared it with my family and friends, the memory is even stronger.

While in College, I attended a Dream Analysis Seminar and it gave me much to think about. My stint with psychology tells me that dreams are either repressed wishes or scraps of memory floating about in the sub-conscious and may mean nothing or can mean a lot (depending on which school of thought you subscribe to). I choose to ignore most of what I dream but some do leave me very disturbed while some make me laugh. I do agree with the notion that dreams are an extension of a person's psyche and it is a certain type of mirroring of what is going on in your sub-conscious. But if I were to bet my life on that theory, I couldn't start to explain or understand what kind of a person I am judging from the dreams I get. (Freud would have the last laugh on this)

My mother believes that dreams are messages from the divine; that they are omens of what is to come and one should carefully interpret them and act accordingly. Most people would scoff at such a view but I have known things to have worked out quite the way she said it would based on her dream interpretation. This makes me wonder if it was just plain coincidence or a case of self-fulfilling prophecy or could it just be that she is right?

There are indeed a lot of cultural connotations to the objects and subjects of dreams, some themes are universal while others are very culture specific. For Nagas, some commonly accepted symbols are predictions of death or loss or illness through dreams involving feasting, merry making, going on a journey, getting married, having your teeth pulled out, losing your limbs or receiving cash.

Dreams of being covered in filth, losing one's clothing or shoes and cutting of one's hair or going bald indicate shame or embarrassment coming one's way. Whereas, wearing or buying new clothes, blood, pregnancy, meeting new people or capturing a wild animal etc denote good or success. 

Some people have the gift of intuition and clarity of dreaming of events as it is going to happen, while some get strong premonitions and are rarely wrong. We Nagas also have a tradition of "Listening to our dreams" before an auspicious project or travel is undertaken. Very often, our people love to predict the gender of an unborn child based on their dreams and (in a very Freudian way of using phallic symbolism) have been proven correct.

I still don't know for sure why we dream the dreams we dream and if they actually mean anything. (Nobody knows for sure I guess, in the light of the many debates and unsatisfactory conclusions.)
In the dream analysis seminar, we were advised to maintain a diary and try to recall our dreams every morning and make a note of current anxieties or events occurring in our lives at that point of time.

I have been practising this and it has been rather entertaining. Four plus years of filling my diaries with details of my dreams and studying them has given me a much better understanding of myself. I can safely say that my dreams usually reflect my state of mind at best and has a lot to do with my memories of daily events, places I visit, images from movies I have watched, pictures, music, my own thoughts and other experiences. There is still the mysterious aspect of dreaming of what seems to be absolutely random stuff but I will hopefully unravel it's workings eventually.

And here's me looking forward to the day I can piece together my favorite images and memories and "will" myself to have delightful dreams every night. After all, it's all in the mind they say.

To happy memories and happier dreams for the happiest of reality.
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