Dreams. No one really knows why we dream, but everyone has an opinion. Do they mean something or are they just garbage our brain is trying to process and throw out?

Here’s a nice summary of scientific thought on dreams:

Honestly, I’ve always thought dreams are more like garbage. I rarely remember my dreams, and when I do, they’re incoherent and nonsensical. And yet… every so often I’ll have a dream that I find myself wanting to attribute meaning to. Friday night I had a dream that I packed a bunch of stuff into my Jeep (including my cat) and drove off. I wound up visiting some relatives on their farm as my first stop to driving across the US.

Now where did that come from? I have a little turbulence in my life right now (some good, some less good), but I haven’t been giving holiday or travel (or even running away) any kind of thought lately. And yet the feeling of wanting to move, to just pick up and go, stuck with me powerfully for a few hours after waking up. I found myself wondering what it meant.

Why do we do that? Why do we try to attribute meaning to dreams? As I mentioned before, most of my other dreams are “dead flies and bits of fluff,” garbage that my brain is filtering out and throwing away.

And of course, not everyone shares my “garbage” view of dreams. Historically speaking, all kinds of meaning has been ascribed to dreams across all kinds of cultures (think oracles and prophets especially). Is this just a sign of human beings desperately trying to make sense of the world around us?

What do you think, readers? Have you had any (or many) dreams that you’ve sought or found meaning in? Do you think dreams are meaningful? Share your thoughts!