Dude, Why Do We Dream?

Dude. Why do we dream?

LOL. Why do you want to know that?

Its for a class.

Like why do we dream, like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or

No, like why do we have dreams

Not like I dream of being an astronaut, or a dinosaur

No, like when I go to sleep, why do I have dreams.

I dream about

I dont want to know what you dream about, I want to know why we have dreams.

Probably because of something you ate. Thats my theory. I had some Taco Bell other night, and I had some messed up dreams. Nightmares, bro.

Never mind. I gotta go the library.

Nah, stay here and Google that, bro. Game about to start.

So I Googled it. Actually, I Duck Duck God it. First result: Very Well Mind. From April 7, 2021. Some of the more prominentdreamtheories contend that the function of dreaming is to: Consolidate memories. Process emotions. Express our deepest desires. Gain practice confronting potential dangers. Many experts believe that wedreamdue to a combination of these reasons rather than any one particular theory (Cherry, 2021). I read that out loud to my roommate. Mm. Games on, bro. He made a hand motion like a mouth shutting. I sat and thought about what Cherry had to say. It sounded like what Id heard in classabout Freud, and dreams-for-survival theory and all that. I wondered for a moment if psychologists were like rock stars of a former agebefore there were guitars and microphones; whether when they traveled to tour with their psychological theories if they were surrounded...

My roommate, I suspected, was perhaps expressing some deep desires, judging by the broadcaster on the field looking pretty and talking sports from the sidelines. But I didnt like where that thought was going and wonderedreally? Can you plan your dreams? Nah.

I asked: You ever wake up from a dream, and then want to get back into it but you cant, or if you do its changed and its, like, not the same?

Yeah like in Inception.

No, I mean like in real life.

Nah, bruh. Games on. Sh.

I cant focus. I gotta go the library.

All right, bruh.

The walk to the library is always a lonely one. I...

…sillywere sleeping. He looked at me over his spectacles and continued: Your soul is still very much alive. Your dreams are like a movie of whats going on in your soul. And he stopped and stared at me as though to say, Duh, and then he turned and pushed off with his truck of books.

I woke up, wiped the drool from my face, stood up, and walked like one trying to pull himself from under a ton of bricks to the nearest bookshelf and stood in front of it and looked at the books right in front of me: there was this book by Antonino Ferro called Torments of the Soul: Psychoanalytic Transformations in Dreaming and Narration. No joke. I pulled it from the bookshelf and flipped it open: to tolerate the limited degree of our knowledge, we act like shipbuilders who insert plugs into the keel of a ship; patches to avoid sinking into not knowing (p. 6). I blinked, nodded, closed the book, put it back on its shelf, and wandered out of the library into the night, somehow feeling I had answered my question.

Besides, there was a game on.

References

Adkins,…