Dreamers of dreams

The subject comes up once in a while with a friend of mine; he had a pretty bad childhood and, to this day, has mostly bad dreams (or at least says he does) that generally result in him waking up in a panic state. The first time he mentioned it, he was talking about hating that feeling and added, "Well, you know what it's like."

I replied, "Actually, I don't. I don't have nightmares." "Oh, come on. Never?" "Never."

See, I do this thing called "lucid dreaming": I'm aware that I'm dreaming during the dream. Theoretically, it has something to do with consciousness being more alert during the dream state; I know that I'll wake up to unexpected sounds but be able to sleep through loud noises I expect, so there's obviously a level of awareness going on there.

(Random note: something - like a mouse - is eating a hole through the ceiling of my room. I get to try to stop it tonight. Yay me.)

In my dreams, if something starts to go bad, I can change it. One example that I remember really clearly: I'm running through a redwood forest, and I can hear a pack of wolves chasing me. Typical bad dream, right? Well, after a few minutes, as I hear them getting closer, the "lucid" part kicks in and I remember thinking, "Screw this - I'm not running any more." And so, passing the next few trees, I came to one with a ladder leading up to a platform about 20 feet up. I climb up and am helped the last few feet by a fully-armed squad of military personnel - who then close the hatch I crawled through and proceed to mow down the wolves as they come into sight. I ended up climbing further up into the tree into a kind of geek treehouse where someone was working on an AI, and the dream went off onto tangents.

But that's the sort of thing I do: if I don't like my dreams, I change them. I've done it all my life. And this is just conjecture, but I think it's had an effect on my waking life as well: I tend to be pretty calm and contented, almost never panicking, and rarely getting angry (frustration is far more common). Obviously I can't just change existence at will like I can in my dreams, but I think there may be part of me that still manipulates life - or at least my perceptions of it - to make things better.

It's a lot easier to feel mentally and emotionally secure when, on a subconscious level, you're used to things always going your way.