How to Dream

I've thought more about dreams and dreaming since my recent post on the subject. Each night, I look forward to great adventures, yet it doesn't always happen. There's no guarantee. But going nights without dreams seems like such a waste, right? So to avoid it, I try these tricks:

1. Daydream. It gets the juices flowing and provides a continual source of amusement throughout each day. Remember the heroine of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca? She daydreamt so much that at times she couldn't tell dream from memory. That's the goal. (In addition to daydreaming during waking hours, try daydreaming yourself to sleep at night. I know it really easy to just think about projects and stress about daytime worries, but try this instead and see where you end up!)

2. When you do dream, write it down or at least tell someone. That helps you remember, but also boosts your dreamability confidence.

3. Set an alarm to go off a couple hours before you plan to rise. When you go back to sleep? That's prime dream real estate.

4. Don't drink too much. You'll just sleep too hard to dream at all.

5. Read lots of books.

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Dream a Little Dream

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I love dreams. They can be strange and fascinating, beautiful with a bittersweet twinge. They can conjure long forgotten memories or give insight into life events by revealing what's happening down in the subconscious.

I do not often share my own dreams simply because, no matter how fascinating it is to one's self, they say nobody really wants to hear other peoples' dreams. But I do. I love to hear what my friends are dreaming! Especially if I have an idea of what they are involved in during waking hours. It's so much fun to make connections and "interpret."

Hudson shared some of his dreams over the hospital week. They were just as strange as you might expect from him. It surely must be true that the more you fill your brain with ideas, the more ideas will show up in your dreams.

Had any interesting dreams lately?

On Being a Seeker

Let me preface this by saying that this is not a post about Harry Potter.

I have been interested in and inspired by Hermann Hesse on and off the past almost-decade. Have you read Steppenwolf? It is about feeling like you don't fit in and all the struggles that come with accepting who you are regardless of what anybody else has to say. And learning that your dreams and the world's expectations of you are not always the same. I'm just going to share a little excerpt that I've gone back to a number of times.

"You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and suffering and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him- the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints- is a fool and a Don Quixote... You are much too exacting a hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many... Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours."

I think many of us spend our youth dreaming of all the wonderful-exciting-amazing things we are going to do someday. But if you look ahead too much, you miss out on all the wonder of right now. I've found that my happiness has nothing to do with how many of those Someday Things I've checked off the list.

It's more about how much I've treasured the little things and it's about enjoying being myself and living my own life (even if it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things).

I love God and the universe he put us in. I seek out beauty every day. I laugh and make my family smile. I am there for my friends. I love who I am. And I love that I have a long way to go to become who I will be.

How have your dreams changed and evolved?