John B. Marek is a writer, farmer, outdoorsman and recovering economic developer. You can find his books at johnbmarek.com.
Like many writers, I keep a notebook and pen on the nightstand next to my bed to jot down ideas that come to me in the middle of the night. Ninety percent of those scribblings are gibberish. I recall waking up from an incredibly vivid dream and writing a couple of hundred words that I was sure would be the next great science fiction novel. It involved the trials and tribulations of a race of people who spent their lives treading water along a rugged coast, bobbing among the rocks. Needless to say, that story never saw the light of day, either figuratively or literally.
The “water people” dream was an outlier. Typically, my dreams inhabit more common spaces. For many years, I was plagued with a recurring dream that I was, for reasons that were never exactly clear, forced to move back into the “little house on the highway” outside Bowling Green, Ohio, where I lived for a few years in the late ’80s. The time I spent there was some of the less enjoyable years of my life, so it’s easy to see how my subconscious would identify that as a symbol of my discontent.
The second of my recurring dream scenarios has me on a college campus, either unable to find the class I’m supposed to be attending or utterly unprepared for the final exam I am about to walk into. While the basis of these dreams, insecurity about something, is pretty straightforward, the interesting thing is that they take place on the same campus, and it’s not either of the schools I actually attended. I am often barefoot or wearing inappropriate footwear.
Scientists are still figuring out the exact purpose of dreams, but there are some prevailing theories. One leading theory is that dreaming helps us process and consolidate memories. During dreams, our brains might be sorting through the information we took in during the day, filing away important memories and discarding unimportant ones.
Dreams may also play a role in emotional processing. They could be a way for our brains to work through our feelings, both positive and negative. For instance, if you’re feeling anxious about an upcoming presentation, you might dream about giving a bad presentation. This could be a way for your brain to rehearse how to deal with that situation.
Along those same lines, nightmares might be a way to practice for potentially dangerous situations so we’re better prepared if they happen in real life. Most of us have had the “can’t get the lock open dream” that falls into this category.
Who needs therapy when you’ve got nightly adventures where you can walk across a snowy campus in flip-flops or give a presentation entirely in interpretive dance? Humor aside, dreams might be like the mental gym – they help us process emotions, solidify memories and even prepare us for the future. So next time you wake up confused and slightly terrified, remember – your brain was just having a wild party, and you get the front-row seat (even if you’re wearing flip-flops.)