2022-01-02
In March 2021 I started keeping a dream journal. I can't recall why exactly – I'm not one to believe there's much meaning contained in dreams or anything. But despite that I've found it a really valuable thing to do. I've been keeping at it every day for over 9 months now and I've got no plans to stop.
So what's the point of dream journalling? And should you give it a try?
For me, the main reason is that's it's just plain fun. Most nights each of us is treated to a cross between a personalised film and a psychedelic hallucination, where the limit isn't just your imagination, but something a little beyond even that.
Some of the dreams I've liked the best are those with strong internal logic. Here's an example of one which I'd forgotten about entirely before writing this piece:
The premise was that there were very few humans left, and in their place were goblins (who loved to eat humans). Goblins were essentially humans in every way except they would melt in the sunlight and they grew pointy ears and teeth on their 18th birthday.
I was a human girl who was living in goblin society pretending to be a goblin. I had an adoptive goblin father (who was this society's equivalent of a vegan I guess), and we had to come up with an elaborate story about what happened to my real parents: my dad walked away and my mum died in accident of some kind.
It was getting relatively close to my 18th birthday and for whatever reason the goblins were suspicious there was a human among them. So they were conducting interrogations on all the under-18s to find out who. I was pretty worried about this because I was likely to be pretty much the only person who wouldn't be able to point to direct goblin relatives, and that would be a giveaway.
To make matters worse the goblins came up with a brilliant idea: just expose everyone to some sunlight and see if they melted a little (which didn't do any real harm). I was going to need to come up with an escape plan fast. Strangely though, when they were checking the person just before me... she turned out to be human!
She busted her way out and I went along. We got on some bikes and started cycling away. Luckily it was daytime so they wouldn't be able to follow us, but we knew they'd come in a truck later and we wouldn't be able to outpace them forever. While cycling, we had a long conversation about life. About how unfair it was that we wouldn't get to grow up. Or certainly not in a normal way: we'd always be on the run at least.
Eventually we were accosted by a random goblin who'd been hanging out in the woods (he had a hoodie on, to avoid melting). We beat the living daylights out of him: broken spine, fractured skull, you name it. Just then, we met a group of human survivors who'd been hiding out in an enclave somewhere. We joined up, and took the goblin with us to the human hospital. They couldn't save him, but I'm not sure anyone minded that outcome.
Or take this biting social commentary:
Someone had written a teen book (like Twilight) that was so bad it physically manifested. The premise was that the "bad boy" had schizophrenia – by which the author meant he switched between 5 different personalities. And the personalities were entirely defined in terms of which people he was likely to bang.
He hung out swimming all the time because apparently he was a mermaid or something. Obviously it was just a way of having his shirt off perpetually.
Here's the thing. While it's fun to have an interesting dream, it's way more fun to think about it while you're awake. And here's the second thing. You forget at least 90% of your dreams. I've discovered that unless I immediately take notes (before even getting out of bed) all of it will disappear from my memory without so much as a trace. In contrast, when I read a dream I've written down its scenes come flooding back and I can picture everything again.
In fact I'm so bad at remembering dreams unaided that these past 9 months have been like the first time I've known what most of them even are. Journalling therefore isn't just about writing, it's also about being able to dream more fully in the first place. So if you're on the fence about dream journalling it raises a question: aren't you curious to know what you dream about?
As I eluded to earlier, I don't believe that dreams have much meaning to them, and certainly not anything you could look up in a 'dream dictionary'. However, it's pretty clear to me that the content of my dreams is not random.
To take a reductive example, a dream where I'm doing cross-products for a test is predicated on my experience of having done cross-products in the first place. It's clear that parts of a dream and based on literal experiences, so it's hard to deny that elements of a dream may be based on your emotions, or what might be going on in your life at the moment (both being parts of your experience). Given that, it's reasonable to me that you might even learn something from a dream as well.
Most of the meaning that I take from my dreams is likely to be just over-interpretation, but it's hard to think all of it is. And even so, the waking interpretation I take from a 'random' sequence of scenes also has a kind of meaning to it. In any case I tend to only interpret a dream as having any meaning at all if it's very obvious.
I won't repeat examples of meaning I've gotten from my dreams here – it would take too long to explain most of them. (I must confess as well that some dreams have been too disturbing to share.) That's not the point anyway. If you try dream journalling you can see for yourself whether or not any meaning jumps out at you: that's part of the fun.
Are there other reasons to keep a dream journal, besides interpreting them, or just having a bit of fun? I think there are, and I'll rattle through a few here.
One thing I've glossed over in the above is that dream journalling isn't easy (though it's not exactly difficult either). It takes discipline to write down notes as soon as you're aware of being awake, and then it takes time (maybe up to 10 minutes) to write those notes up fully once you're more alert.1
Despite that, I think the practice is well worth it. By writing down my dreams, I've been able to properly experience them in all their strangeness, and even look forward to what the next one might hold. Given how serious we tend to be in waking life I think that's a source of playfulness worth cultivating.
I'd recommend anyone at least give it a try. You might be surprised what you find.