Dreams are a very important phenomenon within our lives and self-understanding in many ways. There are two ways to define dreaming, as someone would likely know, the sleeping dream and the wakeful dream. In sleep, the brain will put someone into what are usually very bizarre situations while they are dormant. Wakeful dreaming is what most people are very familiar with: a plan or desire for the future, to be successful, whatever the person wished. Waking dreams can be used as a path to self-understanding, or discovering more about oneself. As stated above, it is a way to describe one's dream of future success, even if they sometimes are not very realistic plans. Most people will “chase” these dreams, realistically or not- and while doing this, they could discover new things about themselves. For example, the character Greg Universe from the cartoon Steven Universe dreamed of being a rock star with his manager, Marty. Greg settled down with Rose once he realized he needed to grow up- this was learning while chasing the unrealistic dream. Similarly, Rose, who was an alien, dreamed that she could protect the Earth from the Diamonds' rule, and her rebels won the thousand year war. She learned much about the human race from this. …show more content…
These literal dreams can and will reflect what is happening in a person's life. There are some “dream symbols,” as they are referred as, that are used by some psychologists to interpret dreams. Some examples are that apocalyptic- zombies, aliens, or nuclear- can relate to stress in the dreamer's life and falling or chasing dreams can mean that the person is avoiding something in their life. If a dreamer knew what some of these symbols mean, they could address what may be happening in their lives. In doing this, the person may discover new things about themselves as they try to fix or at least address the problems that the dream or dreams