Why do we need to dream when we sleep?
By: Man Shun (Daniel) Tse
For countless years, people lied down on their beds and felt their heavy eyelids
drop. Then came a scenery of complete darkness. Just before they could fast
forward into the following day, an invisible wind carried them away, drifting them to
an imaginative land. At times it brought them to a cheerful celebration with
confetti, but at times it locked them inside a gloomy mansion with ghosts.
Dreams. What are dreams? For countless years, people have wondered. What is
the meaning of dreams? Why do we have dreams? Advances in technology and
science have answered many of the once unknown. For instance, many scientists
believe that dreams are related to memories. However the necessity of dreaming
still remains unknown.
People appeared less than ten million years ago, and yet now people to an extent
have dominated the earth. The once savage creatures have slowly developed into
the honourable gentlemen. The normal tree branches had been used for building
houses and huts. The troubling geography had been turned into convenient cities.
People are intelligent beings. They invent and do things that the world have never
seen.
People have fast-working brains. They can think and they can imagine. People had
thought of indirect ways to express their feelings and created art. The idea of small
magical beings and big fire-breathing lizards appeared, thus stories and fantasy
were born. People had connected luck in their daily routine with an unknown
power from above, and were concerned with the satisfaction of those unknown
powers. From this, religion was created. Carving on rock became a way of
communication. Jazz and blues became a way to express the inequality. People
are very creative with their unique ideas, and it seems as if there aren’t any limits.
And yet people are very evil. They remember the sorrow and grief. They remember
the anger and hate. They always think of ways to satisfy themselves and get
revenge. The Battle of Hastings was an act of aggression and was motivated by
power and greed. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand caused chain
reactions all over Europe, and it was a result of jealousy and hate. The death of
Osama bin Laden by the US Navy SEALS was a result of hatred and revenge.
People are also not fearless. People are afraid of large animals because they fear
that they are the prey. People fear the grasp of a red hand that will pull them down
to hell because they fear sins. People are afraid of cursing others because they
fear the power of karma. People are naturally cowards, and are afraid to do things.
Without realising, people undid their natural goodness in them. Recently, the
emergence of electronics had made the new generation lazy. Many kindergarten
children secretly use their calculators to perform math instead of figuring out the
answer on their own. Many teenagers open their laptop and enter a search term on
google images for a project instead of thinking new ideas themselves.
And because of that, people need dreams. Many scientists agreed on the fact that
dreams are related to memory. The imaginative land that an invisible wind carried
them to was not an imaginative land, but rather a reminder. People have random
colourful dreams about themselves in a fantasy world because dreams remind
them to be creative. People have dreams about their past to remind them to be
hard-working. People have nightmares because dreams remind them to be
cautious, and to remind them to fear.
Therefore, people need to dream.