In the past I have written about dreams but I have never really discussed the phenomenon that I am about to bring up.

Most nights I will dream and have very little recollection of what I actually dreamt about. Sadly, my dream journal is lacking these days. Some nights I will dream and wake up in the morning with a vague idea of what happened. Then, on a very small percentage of nights, I will wake up either in the middle of the night or in the morning with a complete recount of what I had dreamt about. When this happens, the memories will usually stay with me throughout the whole day.

Last night I had a dream about a person who I had not really had any contact with for a couple years. This person didn’t die or we didn’t have a falling out but we had gone our separate ways and I really hadn’t thought much about this individual over that time. However, after my dream last night I couldn’t stop thinking about this person throughout all of today. The dream came totally out of the blue and sidetracked my mind for the next twelve conscious hours after. I thought about reaching out to this person but decided against it.

This happens to me in other ways too. Several times I have had dreams about certain things from my past that happened many years ago, I am talking about totally mundane things such as a family gathering at a park. When I woke up in the morning the dream residue was still floating around in my brain and I thought about that reunion in the park (or whatever event it was) all day long. It just stayed with me. I find it fascinating because the only way I would have ever thought about those events ever again was if I decided to look back in my journals to those specific days several years ago. Instead a random dream brought them back into my consciousness. I have also had dreams that took me back to events when I was really young. Upon awakening the dream was still crystal clear but I couldn’t actually pinpoint if the event the dream portrayed had actually happened or not. I would go through the whole day trying to trace through my memory bank trying to decide if the dream represented a real life event from when I was a toddler or if it was a figment of my imagination.

I sometimes feel the impact from nightmares throughout the day too. However one of two things will happen. Either the nightmare will seem completely silly and non-frightening as the day goes on or the unconscious experience will trouble me all the way up until I go to sleep again the next night. Definitely very interesting.

I don’t always want to have weird things I dream up in the wee hours of the night/morning stay with me during the day but every now and then it is okay. To me it is kind of like a mystery trying to figure out how I could have dreamt whatever it was and why it had such an impact to stay with me when the sun rose. Dreams are fascinating and their power can sometimes extend much further from when our eyes are closed. Don’t Blink.