What If Dreams Held the Answer?

Have you ever thought about the impact dreams had on your life? Wikipedia states:

“The contents and biological purposes of dreams are not fully understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history.“

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams

Not much, eh? There are some additional theses:

“Freud suggested that bad dreams let the brain learn to gain control over emotions resulting from distressing experiences.”
“Dreams regulate mood.”

The last sentence sums up my recent ramblings and explains where I’m heading in this entry.

It all started while I was observing my children. After my two-year-old son’s typical wake up (he often wakes up crying), I tried to explain what a bad dream was. And boy, did he understand! He immediately caught on. He was almost able to elaborate on his emotions by adding additional details: monsters, darkness etc. With only those few words he was able to utter (2 years & 3 months of life don’t make it easy). This is my son. A cheerful fella overall, but with this… additional layer. Slightly withdrawn, slightly pensive.

My daughter? She is all smiles. She not only wakes up smiling, she smiles almost all the time.

In my early years I had plenty of dreams. A significant part of them was bad. I don’t tend to recall my dreams any more these days and I’m quite certain that this is a defensive mechanism. One cannot be separated from his/her subconsciousness entirely though.

I’m very much like my son. My son seems to be very much like me.

What if? What if our dreams were responsible for our moods indeed? What if our levels of generally recognized optimism depended on those dreams? My son doesn’t watch TV, we protect him from bad experiences, he isn’t beaten or exposed to anything scary. Yet, his manner is so much different than his sister’s.

What if dreams held the answer to many questions regarding depression, anxiety, fear, anger? And which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Choose DIY

In my ol’ small business days I remember one thing quite clearly (not only one, mind you, but this certainly comes to mind — in comparison with my corporate life nowadays):

Choose DIY!

Small businesses often have this… self-reliance imprinted in their operations. E.g. if there is any creative work to be done, e.g. a promotional leaflet, a brochure, a small company’s first steps rarely end up in a creative agency. If a small piece of software needs to be developed, all eyes turn inwards first — looking for someone who has at least part of the required know-how. There are countless examples of analogical cases.

The opposite can be seen in corporations. I often see departments bearing “productive labels”, not capable of developing anything on their own. For example, I remember huge IT departments (with scripting / software development skills [sic]) requiring help from 3rd parties to prepare a miserable HTML manual…

Is it really that others can do better? Is it because we sincerely believe that non-core processes need to be ruthlessly outsourced or services bought? Sometimes I have a feeling that ownership and communication issues, bureaucracy make it easier for us to rely on big bucks and thus — the outside world.

But then, I believe in self-reliance.

Virtual Reality

“May you live in interesting times” — a colleague of mine recently said. This was intended as a wish. Little did that person realize, that the saying was in fact an old Chinese curse. But then, we live in interesting times already. We were busy creating a virtual reality of ours when someone said:

“This is phony and it will surely collapse.”

Similar words were recently delivered by Peter Schiff in reference to the current economical situation in the U.S.

This is what we ourselves are beginning to realize with each bankruptcy & failure — everything that has no grounds in solid reality can get easily out of hand. Financial instruments, ideas or relations. In fact, about everything that’s going on in human civilization 1.0.

We like to build houses made of cards:

We start with down-to-earth stuff, with the basics (e.g. basic values, inventions, early communication etc.). Gradually our common knowledge accumulates. We re-use and link. We develop faster. We leverage our previous knowledge. In many cases we pay by losing grip on the basics, in fact — on reality. Our new worlds become so far apart from “real life” that we can hardly imagine the consequences of losing it altogether. We humans, love to create worlds.

I admit, this message was rather gloomy. As a… consolidation, here’s a slightly more optimistic reflection on our present & future.