About Dreams

There was a time when my dreams were at their most intense—every night was like performing in a large-scale situational drama, constantly switching scenes and actors. When I woke up in the morning, my head felt heavy and groggy. Later, after entering high school and then university, my dreams became fewer and fewer, and my ability to remember them grew worse. If it weren’t for some accidental chance the next day hearing or seeing something that suddenly triggered my memory, I could hardly remember having dreamed at all. I don’t know the general reason for this situation. My personal guess is that when I was young I loved fantasizing. Lacking ways to learn about various things, I was always imagining distant worlds and strange phenomena. But no matter how much I thought, there was no one around who could answer my questions, and I didn’t dare ask teachers—they’d probably say I was daydreaming all day instead of focusing on proper studies, otherwise my grades wouldn’t be such a mess. So when I slept at night, my brain kept pondering problems I hadn’t figured out during the day, which created these dreams.

Through this explanation, I feel a sense of regret. How desperately I thirsted for knowledge as a child, how much I loved thinking about problems—yet it was crushed by harsh reality. I have a hundred reasons to envy today’s children. For example, my younger brother, at an age when he’s as curious about the world as I once was, now has sufficient tools to access the content he needs. The slight downside is that although there are many tools—like computers—he doesn’t use them to their full potential. He completely treats the computer as a game console. One of my dorm roommates is the same. After several years of university, he can’t even remember the school’s domain name. Once when I needed to use his computer, I found his desktop had only one game and a few rarely used items—no browser. He had to go through “Start—Programs—Internet Explorer” to open a webpage. Completely speechless.

If I’d had these things before, perhaps I wouldn’t have suffered from frequent dreams for so long. But those uncomfortable days have finally passed, and I won’t return to that old time.

Early this morning, just before dawn, I had a long-awaited dream. I woke up quickly afterward, so I still remember the content. I think this dream is quite interesting. It seemed to be in a mass grave, with broken coffins and small burial mounds everywhere, and some strange expressionless, bloodless people—maybe ghosts. Suddenly a tank rolled up, with a soldier standing at the open top holding a machine gun. After driving through, it reached a place that looked like a forest. This soldier suddenly raised his gun and shot a large bird on a tree, then they went to chase a kangaroo that had jumped out from somewhere. I let this kangaroo jump onto my arm and told the soldier not to kill it. Then I took the kangaroo to the southernmost part of China, with the sea strait outside. I was about to send this kangaroo back to Australia when suddenly it spoke, saying it wouldn’t go to Australia—it wanted to return to its original place. I guessed its original place might be a zoo. Just as I was at a loss, afraid it would go back and continue being harmed, I was suddenly woken up by sounds from outside. This dream tells the story of me helping someone escape a predicament, only for them to be ungrateful, thinking they were safe instead. Ridiculous.

After having this dream, I don’t know when I’ll dream again or remember a dream.