5 Weird Facts About Dreaming You Definitely Don’t Know
Totally interesting, and totally true.
Ahhh, dreaming. It feels like living in a completely different world for a while, because that’s exactly what it is. As I mentioned in this article, we spend an average of six years of our lives dreaming, so we might as well know everything there is to know about it! Because of my deep love for dreams, and for knowing things (not unlike Tyrion Lannister), I’ve curated five of my favorite facts about dreaming to share with you. *Clears throat*
1. It’s Not So Black And White
When we think of dreaming, we think of crazy colorful wonderlands of bright, strange imagery. While cartoons would have us believe that only animals do it, it’s known that some humans actually dream in black and white. To be exact, 12% of people are spending their sleep cycle in grayscale rather than in color. Black and white dreaming is an experience that almost exclusively belongs to senior citizens, the correlation being that they were children raised on monochromatic television and movies. Kids these days, with their color spectrum media and vivid dreams, I tell ya.
2. Subconscious Storytelling
Our favorite sleepy sexaholic Sigmund Freud stated that our dreams are an open door to our innermost thoughts, made up of latent content and manifest content. According to Freud, the latent content makes up the hidden symbols and deeper meaning of our dreams, fueled by the subconscious mind, whereas the manifest content comprises what we actually see happening in our dreams, a product of the conscious mind. It is beneficial to have your dreams professionally interpreted to show you what’s going on in your subconscious mind so that you can understand your deeper needs, and change your life for the better. Give it the ol’ college try!
3. Wide Awake, Asleep
After a busy day, we find solace in the idea of a restful night’s sleep. While our bodies rest, though, our brains kick into high gear and process everything that we learned, did, observed, and felt throughout the day. It is also suggested that our brains work even harder during our dreams when we’ve experienced something strongly impactful, be it positive or negative, during our waking life that day. There are many sleep studies out there that track electrical activity in the brain to see how we digest information we’ve learned throughout the day while we sleep, all of which reinforce the importance of a good night’s sleep to keep your mind sharp. Don’t wanna let our minds turn to goo, now do we?
4. He’s So Dreamy
Interestingly enough, every person you’ve seen in a dream is somebody that you’ve seen during your waking life. It is impossible for our brains to conceptualize the shapes, colors, and concepts that create faces while we sleep, so it shuffles through a rolodex of faces you’ve subconsciously ingested in your waking life. It’s suggested that the people you see are those your mind has absorbed through social media, movies, simply walking through a grocery store, and literally any other place where you have seen a human visage. Well, since it’s proven and all… *stares unblinking at Heath Ledger*
5. Profitable Prophecies
Funny how we can spend our days waiting for genius to strike, when all we need is one incredible dream. Some of the most renown concepts and contributions to our world came to people while they were dreaming. The DNA double helix was an idea that came to James Watson while he slept. A dream-infused power nap during a lengthy research session yielded Dimitri Mendeleev the concept for the Periodic Table of Elements. Sir Paul McCartney of The Beatles dreamt the song “Yesterday”, which is now one of the most played songs in music history. Larry Page? Google. Tesla? The alternating current generator. Need I go on?
