All Dreams Real

Where do we go when we dream?

Are our dreams real?

Dreams are mystical. Even now, with all our neuroscience research and data, we still don’t fully understand them. The science explains parts of them, REM cycles, memory consolidation, how our subconscious processes experience, yet the explanations never quite satisfy the mystery. From ancient myth to modern psychology, the literature on dreams still leaves room for wonder. We wake up changed, knowing something happened, even if we can’t explain what.

I grew up believing dreams were nonsense. I always took them with a grain of salt, reminding myself:

It’s just a dream.

Random amalgamations of thoughts that live in the margins of our mind. Bits and pieces of the day replayed and rearranged by our subconscious. Our fears, our fantasies, the things we don’t have time to focus on while we’re awake. Nothing more.

But as I got older, I started noticing patterns.

I’ll dream about people I haven’t seen or heard from in months, sometimes years, and then see them the next day. Or they’ll text me out of nowhere. Coincidence, maybe. But it’s happened more times than I can count, enough to make me ponder.

I’ve interacted with people in dreams I wouldn’t normally speak to in real life. Old classmates. Distant family. Versions of people that feel familiar, but new. And somehow, after waking up, I feel encouraged to reach out. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don’t. But the impulse is there, as if I’m being nudged to act.

Sometimes I see people in my dreams as they were long ago. Younger and still unknowing. I wake up wondering if that’s how I still see them, frozen in the version I once knew, or if it’s the version of them I miss the most. Maybe our dreams don’t present people the way time does in real life. Maybe they return them to us at the moment we felt closest.

I’ve dreamt of the end of the world more times than I can remember. I’ve seen the sky crack open and the sun explode into vivid colors. Nuclear bombs. Floods swallowing us whole. But it’s never chaos. It’s always calm. As if I’m meant to witness something rather than escape it.

I’ve gone on adventures with people I’ve never seen before. I’ve entered fictional worlds. Some beautiful, some terrifying. I’ve wielded powers that defy the laws of our world. I wake up with insights from places that don’t even exist.

I started asking myself:

Is it all nonsense?

Maybe dreams are places where our minds go to download information, like the Construct in The Matrix. A space outside of time for experiencing things we’re not ready to face in real life. Maybe they’re mirrors, showing us truths we avoid during the day. Maybe they’re memories and thoughts we inherit from our ancestors.

Or maybe dreams are windows. Glimpses into parallel versions of ourselves. Infinite timelines running adjacent to one another. Divergent paths our world could’ve taken. Alternate endings played out to help us live better lives. Not predictions or prophecies, just possibilities.

I don’t know the answer. I’m not sure anyone does.

But dreams don’t feel random when you pay attention to them. They feel symbolic, something we can hold but not grasp fully, like a fistful of sand or messages written in a language we never fully learned.

I don’t think we’re meant to interpret every dream. Maybe it’s enough to observe and listen, to notice what stays with us after we wake up.

The feeling. The people. The places. The conversations.

Even if dreams aren’t real in the way we define reality, they still shape us. They influence who we think about, what we fear, and what we hope for.

They make me feel lucky for the life I’m living.

Wherever we go when we dream, we can come back changed, even if only a little. And maybe that’s enough to make them real.