A Lighter View
Dreams that shouldn't come true
By K.E.H. Stagg

Jan. 28, 2010

A famous animated character defined a dream as: “a wish your heart makes when you’re fast asleep.” I say, “I don’t think so!”

My heartfelt wish is more along the lines of the list found in a Christmas song: cessation of wars all over the world; eradiction of poverty and famine and kindness between human beings everywhere. Instead, my dreams feature escaping from rabid animals; having to stuff my bathing suit full of coins on the bottom of the ocean and return to the surface before my lungs explode and trying to figure out who the mass murderer is before s/he claims another victim. By the reckoning of that famous animated character, my heartfelt wish is to scare myself half to death. That is simply not true.

So what are dreams if they’re not the heartfelt wish of sound sleepers? Personally, I’m voting for a definition of the former Soviet Union: “a riddle wrapped in an enigma surrounded by mystery.” I don’t actually expect a rabid wolf to track me down out of all the residents of greater Dillsburg, nor do I anticipate that I will ever be thrown into the ocean by a stopwatch-wielding looney who commands—just prior to heaving me into the drink—“Bring back every coin you can find down there before your lungs collapse.”

However, I do think that if a rabid wolf is prowling the Dillsburg environs, the likelihood of its honing in on me are pretty high; just as I would not be surprised by a lunatic coin collector somehow finding me and forcing me to comb the Yellow Breeches until I my lungs finally did give out. Do I really want any of this to occur? Of course not! But do I think it could happen? Certainly, based on past personal experience. That’s just the kind of luck I have.

If it were possible to pre-program my dreams to make them reflect what I’d really like to take place in my life, I’d be sure to dream of inheriting a fortune or getting a free meal at a restaurant I like for no reason (not because my order was totally screwed up and now they owe me to make it right.) Those are the events I’d gladly experience over being stuck running in quicksand on Baltimore Street when the runaway freight train bears down on me. I know Baltimore Street doesn’t have a train line or a quicksand pit, but dreams have nothing to do with fact.

Which brings me back to my original dilemma: Why should dreams be reckoned heartfelt wishes? Can’t we just admit they’re insane and have no bearing on real life and leave it at that?