Once, when I was a child, I dreamt my own death. I think I must have been 10 or 11, and in the dream I was sitting on my best friend’s parent’s bed. I felt myself falling and everything went black before I hit the ground. I knew I was dead and paradoxically I was aware it was the end and there was nothing after it.
This stayed with me for quite a while and I think about it quite a bit. It’s certainly not the strangest dream I’ve ever had – that award goes to the recurring nightly dream about the little people that lived in my bathroom, but that’s another blog post.
Dreams, science will tell you, are the brain defragging its hard drive after a hard day thinking. But of course, we know different don’t we?
In fact, dreams are liminal escapes into the true reality of being, unfettered by material reality, corporeality, physics (quantum or otherwise – who cares if it’s a wave or a particle when it’s got your first grade English teacher’s face) or that pesky logic bullshit we’re tied to.
Dreams are real. More real than your office job or what people think about your new haircut. Truly, the only place you’re free from other people and – critically – yourself.
They say you dream more often than you remember doing so. I wonder how many other times I’ve died in the real world.