A new trigger to productivity?

Yesterday I felt miserably lost and figured I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile staring at the screen. I took a quick shower and decided to take a stroll. Left at about 1749 and decided to walk down to the Shangumugam beach about 6kms from my house. In a sturdy pace I hit the beach and returned back on a different route. Thought process all through the walk was nothing intellectual. Just random strings buzzing in and out. Got back home and hit the bed pretty early.

What happened post this is something that really got me thinking. I saw this amazing dream of me strategically and miraculously surviving from a historic fort that was giving in to torrential waters from an ancient collapsing dam. Looks like we[Not really sure ‘Who’] were walking across this really huge dam. The water is quite transparent and is sparkling blue. All of a sudden we sense the water level going up. People start running helter skelter and there’s a mad rush to get across to the safer contours. Funnily there’s also a set of people who’re lazily walking around. Then there’s an immaculate focus on a few people trying to help others cross. and even before we know most of us are in the water. A few know how to swim, rest are left dangling underwater on to crevices on the stone formations. [The water is pristine blue and transparent.] Somehow the whole setup changes and is now of a historic fort and water gushing into the minarets and tombs. As I’m lost in the waters, I see the gates of the dam opening up. I turn around. My mind still knowing this to be a dream tries to understand the logic. It senses that one of the gates pulls in horizontally towards the left thus creating a huge space for the water to fill in; leading to the water level subsiding in the reservoir. Finally it so happens that most of us are safely stranded on the ruins. People run around to find their dear ones. Atharv and Pranav – two of my kids finally find their mother who for some reason talks about people spitting in the corners and smoking up. A kid comes and thanks me for flinging her away to safety from the moving flood gates. There’s suddenly a big crowd moving towards us. Happens to be a politician coming to address the crowd. A few of us take offence and start throwing him and his followers in the water. The itouch morning alarm rings and I’m up. All fresh. All happy. All excited.

This has been the most colorful, action filled, thought provoking and reflective dream that I’ve dream’t till date.  Not just because of what the brain visualized during the dream but more because of the effect it had on me and my mood the morning that followed. Today I seem to be in my top spirits and I’ve finished almost half of what I planned to finish today. This got me to wonder, If a dream really motivates one to be more productive and rejuvenates, can we program our brain to subconsciously create interesting stories and play it when the body is taking rest? Do dreams really mean something? Do they really connect the dots that haven’t been joined in reality?

I’ve always thought dreams are a manifestation of what your body really wants to see or do. The brain sub-consciously feeds in actions or words from your conversations and visual memory and twines a story as days progress. At one point of time when it gets the trigger – not sure what, it releases the story for you to explore. Probably my trigger was the sound of the thundering waves at the Shangumugam beach clubbed with the stress that the body underwent because of the 13km walk. Well, that seems to be a good start to analyzing the triggers behind dreams!