The Synchronicity of dreams

I saw a post on Facebook yesterday, and it really got me thinking, and besides this post has sparked more than a few story ideas in my mind.

It was a comment from Becky Fyfe – a wonderful author and wonderful mother who I have had the pleasure of getting to know over the last few months.

The questions that were raised, to jump away from her post, as it is was of a personal nature, were about dreams. Is it possible for people to synchronize their dreams? To share the same experiences under varying circumstances.

Dreams are a powerful thing and something (among a great many ‘things’) that fascinate me.

The first question that came up was if a person tells you there dream, and it affects you so much in its nature, that you then have the exact same dream when going to sleep. I can understand this link, dreams are after all somewhat suggestive in nature and often incorporate elements from our recently experienced day.

However what about this…

A fever in a young girl results in a dream about a parent dying, fast forward so many years and that girl has become a mother and has children of her own. One of these has a fever, and suffers from a nightmare about a parent dying. Sure, dreams about the loss of a loved one are fairly commonplace, but under such identical circumstances?

What about other dreams, none loved one related. Could it be that there is a genetic predisposition to dreams? I have no idea about the science of it all, but you must admit, it sounds plausible. Let’s face it, so many character traits and mannerisms are passed on through genetics, that is can only be expected that some of this spills into the dream world.

I have seen a lot of conversations on this subject, and words thrown around like lucid dreaming, astral dreaming and the like, and it seems that there is a definite split between viewpoints.

I don’t know what I believe as it has never happened to me, not even close, but the concept of it is intriguing to me, especially as a writer. Think of the stories that could be woven with that as a basis.

What if it is not the dream itself, but the fever that creates the link, a pre-set way for the body to handle sleep when sick. The questions that can be asked are endless, as too are the answers.

The truth is, I guess, that we will never really know, it is just another one of life’s many mysteries.

What do you think? Is it possible for people to share dreams? What about not just sharing a dream in terms of setting and general nature, but co-inhabiting one single dream? Two very different possibilities, but each one equally thought-provoking.

I guess it leads on to a question about whether we can control out dreams, to what extent and whether we should want to or not. The idea of controlling a dream, is to, a stifling thing. No different to telling ourselves, or someone else, to stop using their imagination. We ask a lot of our brains, day in day out, and sleep, or so I like to think, is not only for us to recharge in, but also for our brain. It is freedom for it to do what it wishes. To harness it, and force it into shackles and lead it down a certain dream path just feels wrong.