“Sweet dreams are made of this. I travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody’s looking for something….” So said Annie Lennox (David Allan Stewart), the Eurythmics, a few years ago (1983).
All the song lyric experts have varied opinions about what those lyrics mean, and I don’t know for certain, but I think it’s a bit of dream interpretation. We literally travel the world in some of our more fanciful and sweet dreams. Lennox goes on to refer to some of the more negative dreams where people are using us, and some of the other anxieties of life, but sweet dreams reflect the best of our emotional life.
Don’t you love it, though, when you have a dream that makes you smile, feel encouraged, appreciated, cared for, and hopeful? Those are the sweet dreams. The origin of the word, dreams, dates from 1200-1250, meaning “joy, mirth, gladness.” Hm
Hopes and dreams seem tied together. What is it about dreams that make hope their most prominent buddy?
There are a couple of definitions for “dreams.” One has to do with a fanciful or concocted scenario of the future. It’s a hopeful but largely unreal vision of excellence in your life. This is the concept of dreams that Roy Orbison sang about, in the first part of Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream), in 1962 (Cindy Walker, songwriter). “Dream baby got me dreamin’ sweet dreams the whole day through.”
The other definition of dreams, has to do with a mental activity, usually in the form of an imagined series of events, occurring during certain phases of sleep. This type of dream is what Orbison meant with the lyrics in the second part of Dream Baby, “Dream baby got me dreamin’ sweet dreams in nighttime too….”
I wonder how these two different definitions of dreams are related. I think perhaps the common denominator of both types of dreams is, hope. Thusly, the reference to “sweet dreams.”
Why do we pray for sweet dreams? From Proverbs 3 – “When you lie down, you will not be afraid; Yes, you will lie down and your sleep will be sweet.”
When we wish someone “sweet dreams,” it’s a blessing. In my opinion, pronouncing “sweet dreams” to someone, punctuates their day with a perfect period.
My writing is a case of recording what happens to be going on currently in my head rather than some crafted work of creative writing. I think my dreams are similar. Are dreams just simply dramatically-set spill-over from waking life?
Dreams, in my view, aren’t some executive producer’s concocted symbolism, meant to express a deep concept. Yet that’s how we’re supposed to interpret them, according to some dream experts.
Dreams truly are movies which are made up of symbols for feelings. So, the bottom line of a movie or show isn’t so much that the girl gets the guy or the cop gets the perp or the soldier wins the war.
Rather it’s that good overcomes evil, love conquers fear, the turtle wins the race, the beaten-down rise up, and hope can’t be suppressed forever.
In this sense, dreams are movies and we are executive producers, who sometimes really deserve an Oscar for our dream content. Dream symbols may reveal emotional material which we aren’t ready to confront readily or just yet, in our waking life. Quite possibly, dreams are meant to ease us into a reality that’s brewing beneath the surface.
Some dreams are subtle, others are obvious. Once in a while a dream is so memorable that we’re startled by it and remember it easily upon awakening. It’s usually the shocking, absurd or scary dreams that we wake from and have to tell someone about. But we “forget” most of our daily dreams.
So, cheers to getting your anxieties or conflicting emotions out in a few confusing dreams. But most of your dreams, I hope reflect the best of your emotional life, spilling out in the sweetest of dreams.