Dreams

Today I woke up with a sad feeling from a dream. And I was wondering what all that means and relates to my subconscious mind. And as per usual, I am trying to suppress the emotion, however, now I am thinking why? It is a negative emotion - yes, but is it a bad one? Being sad is a part of life, and because one woke up sad do I really need to make it go away? Somehow, this time round I am starting to see what being sad is representing, and what it is marking.

During sleep the mind is sorting connections, memories, emotions… and trying to make sense out of them and putting them in a story. And sometimes I wonder what one can do to move from here. Well I guess what one does with emotions in general. I do not have the dream in mind anymore, which means the brain does not think that the dream per se will help me sort things out, but the emotion it left behind. Well that I can work with. I have been analyzing what happened the night before, and how this was connected to what has been happening for the past months. And I am realizing this was my brain's way of signifying that a chapter has been closed. I wanted for the chapter to close in another way, but we do not always hold all the cards. So I think my brain, by giving me sadness, it was the way of giving me closure. That is nice. Being sad because of closure is nice, and now that I have figured it out, somehow I do not feel sad anymore. Weird thing these emotions.

I wonder how many times I stuffed my emotions after a dream in the mental cupboard, because I felt that it was inconvenient and useless. Who cares about dreams right? But I am starting to think that the lingering emotion afterwards is key to better understand and integrate what you are experiencing in the waking world. One should not underestimate the tons of data points that your brain has processed in order to result in that emotion. And as a scientist, I have to come to terms with accepting, that just because I do not understand exactly how it works, it does not mean that it has no function or that it is altogether useless.

And if you are reading this, I wonder what do you with your dreams?