Sleep to Dream

Written by: Sapphire Faerie

Valentine's Day, eh? What to write about? I spent some time mulling it over. Love would be the obvious thing, but it's a bit of a cliché and I like being different.

So I started thinking. The answer came to me on a recent afternoon after waking up from a nice nap. I started thinking about how much I love sleep. And then I knew. I knew that I would write about sleep. Because Valentine's Day is about love, and if there's anything I've ever had a love affair with, it's sleeping.

All humans need sleep. It's a fact. Sleep is our time to recharge our batteries. All humans dream. Whether we remember our dreams or not is another matter. But no one knows why we dream. Scientests and psychologists alike have their theories, but no one's certain.

I love sleeping for the express purpose that I love dreaming. If I couldn't dream, I wouldn't want to sleep at all. I'm easily bored, and I like to be entertained. Every dream is an adventure.

Whilst dreaming, you can do so much that you normally wouldn't. You can adventure in new worlds, meet celebrities, and totally defy logic. You can fly with the birds, and swim with the fishes.

I remember purchasing a copy of Evanescence's Fallen album, and was quite pleased to listen to it and discover that the song Imaginary is entirely about using sleep and dreams to escape the unpleasantries of real life. Take a look at the second verse of the song:

Don't say I'm out of touch

With this rampant chaos, your reality

I know well what lies beyond my sleeping refuge

The nightmare I built my own world to escape

The waking world is being described as a nightmare, while the dream world is the refuge from it. I often feel that way. Sometimes I find myself looking forward to going to bed, just so I can have those dreams. On occasion I've even hoped to have nightmares. The reason being that nightmares are often very vivid.

I've also experienced the wonder of lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is a dream in which you realize that you're dreaming. And upon making this realization, you have the ability to take initiative and control some aspect of the dream. The window of lucidity is usually pretty small. You'll usually forget rather quickly that you're dreaming, and lose that chance for control. But while the window is open, anything is possible.

I love sleep. I love to dream. And now you all know why. Good luck in your dreams. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. I'll leave you now with a quote:

"When we take the time to dream, we discover the many windows to our soul." - Isabel Burani