Sleepwalking

Throughout my life, I've had a few frequently-recurring dreams or dream motifs. For example, whenever I've visited a mall or an amusement park in my dreams, it's always been the same mall and amusement park—both of which are entirely imaginary. In any given recurrence, I may find myself in a "new" part of either facility, but things will slowly, imperceptibly revert to form. My brain finds a way to mesh new areas into the existing pattern, as if it accords a greater weight to these dream-standards for malls and amusement parks than to any new locations.

As a kid, I had at least one other recurring dream trope. I can recall, vividly and with great clarity, innumerable dreams in which lights, shapes, and colors were projected onto the night sky above my hometown and came to life. The figures in this light show were two-dimensional, something in between an animated cartoon and a laser light show. They danced and swirled and emoted through the night.

I remember being buckled into the car, leaning my head against the cool window and craning my neck so that I could get a better view of the carnival above. Although the show's purpose was never clear, and indeed remains ineffable to this day, there was some order to the proceedings. Voices and music and sound effects accompanied the show, booming out from impossible speakers, recounting some tall tale or vaguely-historical event. Even though I never quite figured out the display's importance, it was, somehow, a source of comfort.

It wasn't until an embarrassing number of years later that I came to recognize that this had been a dream at all. Throughout much of my childhood, I'd assumed that this was some sort of special holiday event that took place in my hometown, some sort of quirky local celebration that we all just took for granted. I might have realized the truth earlier if my family had not moved to a new town when I was seven. Of course no-one in our new town would know about the living sky; what possible interest could it hold for outsiders? Even after I began to suspect the whole thing was imaginary, I still asked my sister about it to double-check and make sure.

This isn't the first time I've had trouble separating dreams from reality. We all do, to an extent. You can't tell me that teenage-you never had a romantic dream about someone you didn't really like, then felt super awkward around them all the next day at school; I know you've been there. And why shouldn't it be tough to tell the two apart? In spite of their bizarre logical faults and inconsistencies, dreams are drawn from real life. They're so realistic that our bodies must literally paralyze themselves to prevent us from acting out our dream activities. Clearly, the boundary remains far from airtight.

Which makes it extra-funny that both of my recurring dream scenarios point to principles of human psychology that are equally relevant in the waking world.

People tend not to see things as they are, but rather to judge them based on how closely they match some internal (often subconscious) standard. We feel comfortable within our norms, uncomfortable when something doesn't match them. Sometimes this dissonance is titillating, sometimes it's offensive, sometimes it vacillates between the two. I'm not saying we can't adapt, but that there is generally a resistance to adapting, likely stemming from how we tie self-identification into the things we normalize.

We also have a strong tendency to fight cognitive dissonance by forcing conformity onto people and things. For people, this takes the form of assuming others we like conform more to our own ways of thinking than they actually do. Just like in my mall and amusement park dreams, when faced with novelty, we try to seek dissonance-free shelter by stepping back to show how this new and potentially threatening thing was really part of the larger, more comfortable thing all along.

Similarly, we're all carrying bits of baggage with us through life. We hold ideas, concepts, and beliefs that we've all brought along since childhood, things that we accept as immutable truths of our world. But, though we lack the perspective to see it, most of these things are just as illusory as the light shows I dreamed in my youth. It is uncomfortable to learn that something we've accepted as normal simply isn't. But if you examine the root causes of many of your prejudices, behaviors and idiosyncrasies, I suspect you'll find they're based on things no more substantial than dreams.

So what can we do about it? Well, I'm not sure; many adults spend years in therapy trying to identify and work through these kinds of issues. The most simplistic thing I can say is, be mindful. When you notice that you're turning something new into the same old mall all over again, stop yourself. Don't be afraid to let a new experience just be a new experience. Travel is one of the best cures for this sort of complacency. Getting out and seeing that there's more than one way for a thing to be is both humbling and exhilarating.

As to the second problem, it's a lot harder to catch on when you've fooled yourself into assuming something is universal and true. Mindfulness is key, once again. Think about your gut feelings rather than just reacting to them. Be open to questions, especially from yourself. Novelty-seeking and travel help here, too, as does interacting with a diverse range of people. There's no surer way of obliterating an assumption than by having to answer for it to someone who doesn't share it.

Finally, realize that just because you learn something isn't real, doesn't mean that it can't still bring you beauty and comfort. I love to remember those nights when the sky was alive with art and fire, and that love isn't diminished now that I know those nights never really happened. And I still stalk the halls of the same dream-malls, and still soar on the same rides at the dream–amusement park, on occasion. It's natural to take comfort in the familiar. But the more things you experience and accept for what they are, rather than for what they are not, the broader and more nuanced your concept of "familiar" will become. The wider we each make that little part of the world we feel safe enough to call "home," the better off we all are.