Jiya Kohar Week 1: Flooded Classrooms
A couple nights ago, I was in Thailand, taking an open note test in a small, dark classroom, when I finally found the perfect answer for the question I was looking for. Just as I was about to write it down, the room suddenly flooded and the paper slipped out of my hand. I tried grabbing on to it, but the more I tried, the further it got away. While this is obviously insane, the funny part is, when I was asleep, none of it felt strange. Dreams never feel strange when you’re in them, no matter how preposterous the situation may be. Taking a test in a flooded room? Sure. Being in Taiwan during the start of junior year? Why not? It’s like dreams have their own set of rules that collapse as soon as you wake up.
How many times have you woken up and thought “Wow, that was such a weird dream,” only to brush it off and continue with your day? I know I have, numerous times. Even better, how many times have you jolted up from a nightmare and been extremely relieved that it was only a dream? For those couple seconds you could still feel all the panic and weight in your chest, but simultaneously slowly feel the weight being taken off. Even trying to explain your dream to another person sounds ridiculous, like trying to explain an inside joke to someone who wasn’t there. I think that’s the point of dreams, it’s a secret movie made by you, for you. If you really pay attention, dreams give you insight to a part of yourself that you could be ignoring.
Science proves this. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers of dreaming and the brain describe dreams as “a most remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person” (NIH). Basically, our mind blends stories and emotions together from our waking life, and turns them into our intricate dreams. In that way, dreams are directly connected to one’s identity. In fact, I would go as far as to say that they are one’s identity. My waking life is explainable and edited, but my dreams are personal explanations of parts of my life, sometimes even those I am trying to suppress. Both of those voices are fully my identity.
Maybe that’s the point. Language is usually written or spoken words that are communicated easily in essays, speeches, and movies. However, dreams speak to me in other ways, like in flooded rooms, in tests, in panic and stress. The language of dreams can be hard to interpret, but are important and worth paying attention to. I will never be able to understand why every single person, place, or thing appears in them, but dreams are how my subconscious speaks to me. Sometimes, they whisper things that I would never admit out loud, or even to myself.
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How many times have you woken up and thought “Wow, that was such a weird dream,” only to brush it off and continue with your day? I know I have, numerous times. Even better, how many times have you jolted up from a nightmare and been extremely relieved that it was only a dream? For those couple seconds you could still feel all the panic and weight in your chest, but simultaneously slowly feel the weight being taken off. Even trying to explain your dream to another person sounds ridiculous, like trying to explain an inside joke to someone who wasn’t there. I think that’s the point of dreams, it’s a secret movie made by you, for you. If you really pay attention, dreams give you insight to a part of yourself that you could be ignoring.
Science proves this. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers of dreaming and the brain describe dreams as “a most remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person” (NIH). Basically, our mind blends stories and emotions together from our waking life, and turns them into our intricate dreams. In that way, dreams are directly connected to one’s identity. In fact, I would go as far as to say that they are one’s identity. My waking life is explainable and edited, but my dreams are personal explanations of parts of my life, sometimes even those I am trying to suppress. Both of those voices are fully my identity.
Maybe that’s the point. Language is usually written or spoken words that are communicated easily in essays, speeches, and movies. However, dreams speak to me in other ways, like in flooded rooms, in tests, in panic and stress. The language of dreams can be hard to interpret, but are important and worth paying attention to. I will never be able to understand why every single person, place, or thing appears in them, but dreams are how my subconscious speaks to me. Sometimes, they whisper things that I would never admit out loud, or even to myself.
What stood out to me the most was the personal anecdote that is used at the beginning. Not only did it flow really well into the rest of the post, it gives readers something to connect back to about each point that is made during the post. I really liked the analogy made when describing the act of explaining dreams is similar to trying to explain inside jokes to someone who wasn't there. It perfectly summarized the weird, confusing feeling that dreams bring upon us and our mind. As someone who is interested in psychology, the connection made between dreams and their messages intrigued me, and I want to learn more about it. The next time that I have a dream, I will definitely be thinking about its meaning.
ReplyDeleteStarting your blog off with a dream you had is so interesting! In 9th grade, I did some research on dream manipulation, and I also found out that dreams can occur to process emotions and fears safely or even to store information about what keeps occurring throughout the day. I, too, have had many weird dreams, and reading this blog made me remember some of them, making me wonder how these are also part of my identity.
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ReplyDeleteThe personal story in the beginning was so captivating! Nice job. I've always believed the dreams you get are based on your real life experiences that your mind cherishes and makes into a better version, in dream form! Sometimes I think that dreams are foreshadowing your future in a way and that some things in your dreams may become real. I really liked your descriptive writing style and the idea that a dream is almost like a personal movie and it incorporates your identity. There are times when I get the craziest dreams ever and they repeat! I remember this one dream of my family hiding from a ghost behind a couch. I swear I get that dream every year, it's spooky! Your blog was very captivating and I got to make many connections to myself.
ReplyDeleteYour observation on how dreams are absurd but they do not seem that way at the moment was very fascinating. I never really questioned the idea of why I am jumping on a giant marsh mellow in the middle of somewhere. The idea that dreams are the blending of emotions and memories is really cool. Your identity after all, are things that you experienced and if dreams are the blending of memories and emotions then they are the rawest form of identity you can have.
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