Dreams and Voices from the Void of Wisdom

Are you more prone to good dreams or nightmares? How often do you remember your dreams?

~ “I used to constantly have nightmares, but I’ve gotten so used to them I don’t consider them to be nightmares anymore. Since I can force control over my dreams, and often lucid dream, they end up turning out pretty well. I don’t often remember my dreams.”

How do the dreams you have affect your view of the world? Such as your beliefs, interests, or goals?

~ “Strongly. I started dating my ex-husband because of a dream (mistake). I just had a dream about living in NYC and felt very drawn to it even though I know I wouldn’t logically enjoy it. It’s obviously something I need to put a critical eye toward!”

What is the strangest dream you can recall having, that you are willing to share?

~ “Being chased by a giant beret-wearing alligator artist through an airport tarmac.”

Dreams Week

Anything could happen, this week, as the voices break down dreams for us: both in relation to ambitions and while sleeping. How often do you dream? Do you remember them? Do you ever let them affect your life decisions? And forget nightmares, what role does actual stress have on your ability to pursue your dreams? Answers aplenty to come. Also, disclaimer that the final question has a few very long responses, but they are well worth the time in my opinion: nothing like a crazy runaway dream story!

Are you more prone to good dreams or nightmares? How often do you remember your dreams?

~ “Good dreams, I remember a dream past waking about once a month”

~ “More prone to nightmares, I guess. They’re often violent dreams, though I wouldn’t consider them nightmares because although scary in the dream I don’t wake up feeling scared/not wanting to sleep or anything.”

~ “Nightmares, 2-3x week “

~ “Rarely remember, not more than 1 or 2 a year, and usually they are good/fun ones”

~ “Dreams. Often.”

~ “Good dreams”

~ “Nightmares. Half the time”

~ “good. Very seldom.”

~ “Mine are usually neither good nor bad but sometimes I have stress-dreams”

~ “More dreams and I can often remember a continuous scene when I wake up but quickly forget it. “

~ “I usually heave more dreams than nightmares, and if anything significant happens, I may remember the dream forever. If nothing important happens, I might just remember that the dream happened and something about it, but no detail.”

~ “Nightmares. I remember when I wake up and sometimes think about them for a while but forget completely or mostly about them after a few hours.”

~ “It’s usually nightmares, and I usually remember my dreams for a little when I wake up but soon forget. That’s why I write them down.”

~ “I remember my dreams every other night. I’m more prone to good or neutral dreams, but sometimes I’ll have dreams that seem fine while they’re happening but a little disturbing once I’m awake, eg. Dreaming I’m cutting a bleeding apple and thinking “woah! An apple that bleeds! Badass!” In the dream, but waking up feeling like what I experienced might be an omen.”

How do the dreams you have affect your view of the world? Such as your beliefs, interests, or goals?

~ “Never”

~ “Not a lot in this regard. Only if something particularly disturbing happens with respect to a person I might think about them differently, or if something happens in the dream that I like I might have a desire to do it irl”

~ “Increase depression and anxiety, become less prone to leave my room or speak to anyone, lack of drive and motivation “

~ “I remember them so rarely they have no effect”

~ “little effect, makes me happy sometimes”

~ “Not too much. I’m still fairly optimistic and assume the best of everyone”

~ “not at all”

~ “The WiFi dream below inspired me to start an outline for a story loosely based on it and I think it’d be cool to eventually publish it”

~ “They don’t really. If anything they’re affected by my interests.”

~ “I don’t feel like they affect my view of the world. They affect my morning mood if anything but that’s about it. “

~ “I used to be pro life, but because of a dream, in which I was a 12 year old teen mom, I changed my beliefs. Dreams like these happen a lot, and sometimes change my view of the world.”

~ “They haven’t affected. The only thing that some of my dreams affect is my hopes of achieving career success because sometimes I dream of ideas for scripts for both short and long movies but when I wake up I see that I’d never be able to make them come true and I have 0 motivation to think more about the script or actually write it. After a few days I completely forget about my idea. That saddens me a great deal because a few times I actually think my idea could be interesting. My mental illnesses are holding me back in life and I’m not going anywhere “

~ “Yes, but its not always a good things. Dreams can give me a false perception of how things are.”

~ “My dreams are usually an amalgamation of fictional characters doing nonsensical things, I don’t give them that much attention or let them impact my world too much.”

How often do your major goals or ambitions change? Can you give an example of a time they changed noticeably?

~ “Not very often. Most of my major ambitions are more abstract, so they don’t really have to shift a whole lot.”

~ “Not often. I guess I’m high school when I realized what I was interested in”

(No response given}

~ “I have never had any major goals or ambitions, I just take whatever opportunities come along.”

~ “Every 5-10 years. I went from wanting to live in a city to wanting to live in the middle of nowhere.”

~ “no”

~ “My goals and ambitions haven’t significantly changed recently”

~ “not often. no example”

~ “Shift during first semester from wanting to be a surgeon to an epidemiologist “

~ “They don’t change very often. If I get introduced to something interesting, instead of replacing another goal they just stack up. There was a period when I was interested in performing arts, since I played cello and sang, but I’m now interested in creating visual art, like drawings or photographs. “

~ “I don’t feel like they change very often or very drastically. I often keep my aspirations and future plans a bit vague and see when the time comes. “

~ “They change sometimes. But there isn’t a tipping point, it is gradual.”

~ “I don’t have major goals/haven’t been affected by dreams like that”

~ “Usually my total intentions are the same, but my plan to get there changes.”

~ “My goals in dreams rarely change”

To what extent does stress or anxiety affect your ability to pursue your dreams and aspirations?

~ “It affects me a lot for short term goals, but it’s generally easier to get over for bigger picture stuff.”

~ “Not a lot, stress does not affect me that much”

~ “Enormously. Anxiety and depression caused a series of psychotic breaks with severe self-harm, criminal behavior, and multiple stints in mental wards and secure facilities over the years. I’m on more or less permanent disability, which is probably for the best. My only aspiration is to live longer and be alone. I had depression and anxiety in my earliest memories and it intensifies with age.”

~ “Not really. I’m more limited by lack of opportunity / money / resources than by stress. There’s no point getting stressed about things I want but can’t have.”

~ “A large extent.”

~ “Makes me avoid them”

~ “It’s an obstacle but I don’t think it’s going to stop me in the long run. “

~ “much, it makes me want to quit everything”

~ “Hella”

~ “It affects it hugely. There are long periods of time when I do nothing at all related to my dreams- ex., Not drawing for a year.”

~ “To a small extent. It’s mostly affected me through interpersonal interactions since I’m an introvert and I often don’t like praising myself. But other than that I tend to feel pretty confident in my ability to pursue my goals. “

~ “I’m always a little bit scared to do anything because of it. “

~ “A great extent. When I think about looking for a job, finding a hobby or going back to studying I feel like it would be too much and I feel like it would be stressful so I don’t even try anything new at all. I sit at home on my phone all day. It’s been a whole year like this already. I can’t do things I think I would like because I have this anticipation feeling that it would be bad and I’d feel anxious and I just feel generally lazy to do everything. Lately I can’t even watch Netflix anymore cause even thinking about opening the app makes me feel anxious. Several times I feel paralyzed, like I don’t want to do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING and everything seems like a bad idea. At these times I rely on drugs to make me sleep. Also, I avoid trying new things because I fear they will not meet my standards/be perfect. For example I’d love to learn how to draw but I know I’d obsess too much about every detail and if it’s not perfect I’ll hate it and completely give up, which is not realistic because you can’t be the best at something you just started, so I avoid it completely “

~ “I don’t think too much.”

~ “It very much stops me from reaching irl goals.”

What is the strangest dream you can recall having, that you are willing to share?

~ “Being chased by a giant beret-wearing alligator artist through an airport tarmac.”

~ “Once I woke up on a golf course. I had just won American idol and then got one of those big checks. My friends roll up in an RV and one of my friend’s dads is driving the RV. We ride towards home. I need to stop at Best Buy to pick up my wii. My friend’s dad turns out to be batman’s Cousin. He needs to stop at the Batman’s cousins meetup. Batman has one other normal cousin and one evil witch cousin that looks like maleficent and the rest of his cousins are zombie doctors that are minions of the evil witch cousin. My friend does something that pisses off the evil witch cousin. She and her minions whip out knives and begin to follow us and he runs to the RV and we drive away but the minions and witch cousin follow in their vehicles. But I still need to stop at Best Buy. So we head over real speedy and I run out while the minions follow. I pick up my wii but they’re closing in. Best Buy sells doctors costumes so we put them on and now we blend in with the zombie doctors but witch cousin still has a knife and is after us. Epic battle and then I wake up”

~ “I was married with children, two things I never want to be because I don’t want to deal with people and i would need to work to support them. I would rather they be dead, so i stabbed them in the throat and eyes repeatedly but they kept talking to me. I took the knife and gutted myself over and over and tore out my insides but i couldn’t die and no matter where I drove I was at work.”

~ “I dreamed that I was Indiana Jones, chasing villains over the rooftops of Cairo. Then somehow ended up in a modern holiday resort with lots of sexy girls in bikinis.”

~ “I often dream that my high school is an elaborate castle with secret passage ways. Or that the city of San Francisco is a giant amusement park.”

~ “incident with a sandcastle with opposite genitalia”

~ “This is the one dream that still freaks me out for some reason: I was walking my dog in the middle of the night near the entrance of my neighborhood. The only thing that lit the night was this street lamp at the end of the street. For some reason, my dog started barking and running after something. I began to run after her and as I was running, I thought I could see something running in the woods next to me. I got to this crossroads with three directions. I start to take the left path because it leads to my home, but then my vision got dark and red, so I went back and down the middle path. Once I started walking down the middle path, I somehow ended up at some pool. As I was walking past, I could see bodies in the pool and for some reason the water was being drained. I continue walking down the path and at the end of the corridor, there is a phone booth. I go into the phone booth and start dialing a number, but in the reflection of the metal, I see the face of someone standing behind me. I turn around and get stabbed and fall to the ground. After that, I woke up. “

~ “it was a sex dream. I met a smoking hot woman, sporty thin, amazing breasts, and we had sex and as I penetrated her,it was the best feeling, I woke up close so orgasm. I was the man in the dream, I am a woman in real life. It left me so confused, also a bit confused about my sexuality. “

~ “People’s dreams were WiFi-dependent and if the WiFi cut out while dreaming you’d be trapped in your dream and that happened to a friend of mine”

~ “I used to have these dreams where I’d be chasing a certain physical feeling. It’d begin with a pattern or something and I’d force it or wait impatiently until it ended with that feeling. When the pattern aligned in a certain way, or a small action gave me that feeling I’d be so satisfied, you’d think I just discovered the truth to all life. I can’t even describe the feeling, it’s so bizarre. I no longer have those dreams though.”

~ “I had a weird dream about a world where humans could fly and it started to become capitalized and people boycotted flying because of it. “

~ “Two Europeans came and wanted to proclaim America back, every civilian was at a place with some boats, and the two European guys came there. One of them was tall and thin, and had a machete; the other one was fat and short, and strangulated people. They started killing everybody. Me, some of my elementary school friends, my dad and a friend’s mom escaped; we went to a car, my best friend was suddenly paralyzed, so we carried her in a weird pushcart , a tsunami came , we swam to Africa, and a bunch of other stuff.”

~ “I have my fair share of nightmares and the strangest thing about them is that they repeat themselves very very often. I dream at least once a week that all my teeth is loose and/or they fall out of my mouth or I pull them out one by one. In the dreams pulling them out doesn’t hurt, it’s like they are all dead, and there’s generally no emotions or other actions particular linked to the teeth falling. It’s so so real that I’ve started to fear actually losing my teeth. And also, I believe my brain has been trying to trick me into believing it’s real. The last time I had this dream, after they fell I thought “well this is just a dream, I’m gonna wake up and they’re gonna be all very firm like always” then, while I was still dreaming, I “woke up” in my bed, checked all my teeth and some of them were actually a bit loose and I was like “holy shit my nightmares came true, I have to hurry to the dentist!” Like wtf brain, why you doing me dirty like this. Something that is also very reoccurring in my nightmares is the inability to shout for help. Usually involves me in some sort of trouble resulting me not being able to move, then proceeding to trying to call for my mom and my voice coming out inaudibly low. The situation I’m in always vary and I can’t remember any in particular. I usually forget all my dreams, except for the ones that happen again and again. Also I have this thing a lot when I recognize a dream (while still asleep) as a dream I had previously, but if you asked me before I went to sleep if I ever had a dream like that, I would say no. It’s like accidentally watching again a movie you have watched before but had no recollection of doing so, but as you re-watch it, you remember everything. Also, I believe some of my dreams are memories.”

~ “Not the strangest but a weird one. Me and this girl I used to be friends with in the dream had ebola. And she died of it, but I was forcibly euthanized. “

~ “I once dreamed that I was an assassin climbing through some ruins to find and kill someone. At some point I became trapped in a haunted tunnel, and the police caught me. I managed to escape but walked to jail on my own instead of trying to hide from the law. Once inside the jail, I had somehow stopped being an assassin and was instead Jean-Pierre Polnareff from JJBA pt. 5. I wheeled my way over to where a view of a forest ( the jail had no cells, and was a large courtyard.) As I sat and watched the trees, people around me grew to the size of Giants and waded around the forest while waving to me.”

How are you feeling, right now?

~ “Pretty good”

~ “Annoyed that I had to type out that entire dream on my cell phone”

~ “Depressed, anxious about everything, dizzy and nauseous from high blood pressure meds, no energy”

~ “Good. Very good.”

~ “Awful. Really awful.”

~ “Giddy”

~ “Happy”

~ “O.K. a bit tired and a bit stressed, finals are approaching and I still have a ton to study”

~ “Tired”

~ “Very tired, emotionally and physically. “

~ “Pretty bored and tired. “

~ “Slightly happy.”

~ “Okay”

~ “Fine. “

~ “Fine.”

Describe yourself, however you want, in two sentences.

There are 3 different fonts that repeat in each of the five colors. You can track the same color/font throughout the post to find out which voice gave which responses!

~ “Queer computer nerd. Aspiring writer”

~ “Science college student”

~ “I’m mentally extremely ill, with diagnosed major depression, general anxiety, OCD, panic attacks, psychosis, fugue state, as well as physical problems of Crohn’s, high blood pressure, and migraines. Conventually speaking, I’ve failed virtually everywhere in life (work, love, sex, health, friendship, money, happiness) but I’ve never cared much”

~ “Middle aged, British guy. A bit geeky.”

~ “Someone who wants to move to the woods and live alone and not interact with another human in real life ever again. The end.”

~ “Don’t know. sir or ma’am.”

~ “Caring, loyal”

~ “I kind of lost myself over the last years, I am trying to find myself again while trying to finally conclude my Bachelors (I took way too long for it). I don´t really know who I am, all I know is that I want to become a more disciplined, successful and self-confident person, someone who is able to come to terms with life itself.”

~ “I honestly don’t know how to do that :/”

~ “Heavily traumatized procrastinator with light aspirations that take more work than I’d like them to. I have too many interests, considered wise for my age, ( despite being prone to stupid decisions ), and I have a thirst for all knowledge that I’ll never act on.”

~ “I am a very curious and pretty empathetic French woman. I want to pursue a career in Computer Science”

~ “I am happy, introverted, creative and productive. I like painting and drawing.”

~ “My life is already over. I don’t belong neither in this body, nor in this place.”

(No Response Given)

~ “If I were a sim my traits would be loner, goofy, loves the outdoors, and geek. “

Final Thoughts

Dream frequency is sporadic, but the average is about once or twice a week; The content of dreams can be absolutely all over the place and maybe that speaks to the power of a mind freed from the constraints of reality. Regardless of that, they don’t have too big a lasting impression on most of us. So a good night’s sleep might be good even with a bad dream, which is important because you’ll need all you can get to keep your stress levels low. Stress and anxiety have come up a number of times in these posts and it’s important to recognize how differently we experience the world around us via stress, and how others cope. But my favorite question, surprisingly, was the one about changing ambitions. On first glance, I was disappointed by the lack of exciting stories. But then I realized they were all speaking such an important lesson. So many voices echoed this sentiment in their own way – Change is a process, not a moment. And that was so powerful to me. We’ve all heard that before, but I encourage you to go back and reread that section. Internalize that message a little bit. Because it’s a beautiful one.

Conversation Sparks

Some more dream questions. How might dreams be viewed in other cultures? Is there a meaningful or clear biological purpose to dreams, if so, what? How does the current distance between us and our goals affect our motivation?

Thanks for listening to this week’s voices of the day! Perhaps your subconscious will be inspired by something you came across and affect your dreams tonight! Or maybe you’ll never think of it again. In either case, time well spent. If you don’t want to wake up yet though, check out our prior posts on Confidence and Curiosity. Also, it has come to my attention that the posts look strangely formatted on tablets as compared to desktops. I will play around with formats and fixes in the near future, sorry about that guys!