Dreams are one of the more perplexing illusions that we, as humans, must innevitably deal with. Dreams are extremely variable and have been the subject of much scrutiny in our culture. Ancient shamans and modern scholars alike have spent countless hours trying to decipher the messages of dreams.
By popular convention, dreams are theorized to have little or no meaning in our current era. The prevailing opinion is that they are the product of neurons firing off in the brain during sleep. This process stimulates the mind, which makes sense of the events by creating an unique "dream space" in which the images appear to take on a pronounced meaning. While this argument seems scientifically valid, we must be open to the possibility that the conventional theorem may not be entirely correct.
It may be that the answer does not lie in the mechanism of the dream but in our own experiences in ascribing meaning to it. By this statement, I argue that something does not need to initially "contain" meaning in order to be meaningful. In fact, in many occurances, I find that the opposite prevails. In my own life I have had entirely random events occur, with myself at their center, and have only deciphered or placed meaning on them after the fact. Dreams, like so many other things in life, don't necessarily have to be about the content but rather about what those events or things mean to us as individuals. In short, it's not what you dream but what you make of your dreams.
In the broad spectrum of things, it is indeed unnecessary to try to find meaning in dreams. As individuals we will tend to place meaning of them anyway. Despite this, the study of the meaning of dreams is not irrelevant as it may provide a window into our own thought processes. Sometimes that window might be the only way to see things outside of your house; to see things outside of your own mind space.
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