Perchance to Dream
I have a Fitbit. My husband gave it to me after gentling me down and softening me up about it. He had a Fitbit already and thought I would like it. I didn’t want it exactly, but I enjoyed getting a gift from my husband. So I generously agreed to wear it.
I am still torn about the darn thing. I like having a wristwatch again–somehow, my watch had stopped working, and I had never replaced it. I also use the Fitbit’s excellent timers and alarms to mildly prod me on to the next thing I need to do. Otherwise, I would probably stare out the window or read trashy fiction all day.
But the Fitbit tracks you and tries to figure out what you are doing. It then becomes way too celebratory about what it has figured out. I told my Fitbit, “ok, I walked somewhere, so get over it! No need for fireworks,” and then I turned that part off (it was hooting and shooting-off fireworks across its tiny screen every time I took a walk)!
For the most part, I’ve resisted its tracking charm, but there is one service it provides that has hooked me. The Fitbit tracks my sleep! Michael and I now compare our sleep scores every morning. My husband’s scores are generally higher. He falls instantly asleep when he lies down. I have struggled with getting a good night’s sleep over the years. Before getting the Fitbit, I discovered that if I plug into audible library books (specifically the Great Courses series), I go to sleep almost as fast as Michael. The drone of college lectures puts me right out.
The Fitbit doesn’t help me have a good night’s sleep, but it records it. If you have had insomnia, it’s a treat to see yourself sleeping well. Fitbit sends me color-coded graphs so I can tell when I was in deep sleep, REM sleep, and what it calls light sleep. Moments when I am awake, show up in bright scarletty pink. Michael and I exclaim and puzzle over our Sleep scores based on some Fitbit proprietary algorithm.
The other morning I looked with more than usual interest at the previous night’s graph to see if I could track something that had happened to me in the night. A vivid dream had brought me completely awake. In the dream, I was on a road (walking or bicycling) when I heard an engine roar behind me. When I turned, I saw a jetliner, massive in the evening sky. And it was heading straight as a plumbline toward the ground. It was so big and close to the earth that my dreaming self wondered if I would feel it or get caught in its debris field when it struck. When it hit, my eyes opened wide, and I sat up in bed. I never got the answer to that question. I was like someone in the movies having a prophetic dream. It took me a while to calm down and fall back asleep.
The Fitbit graph showed a big pink band where I had lain awake with my heart pounding. Yes, It could identify when I had had the dream, but it couldn’t tell me that I had been dreaming or the dream’s significance.
Thank the gods of slumber!
For the most part, I am delighted to find science worming around in areas of human life that before now didn’t interest it. Brain scans while we take psychedelic drugs; let’s do more of them. Experiments that measure what gives us feelings of awe; I eat those up. I’m science-curious. But I’m queasy about demythologizing dreams.
Science doesn’t know what to make of dreams–yet. Scientists now know many sciency things about them as they measure them in brain scanners. But they don’t have any idea what they mean. Dreams still belong to the dreamer and no one else. No one can counter your belief that the messages in dreams are coming from your beloved dead, the universe, or Divine Intelligence. Jung thought they were from your unconscious mind and therefore hooked up to everything! One standard ‘sciency’ theory is that they are a way to process data from the day. Dreams may help us pack our experiences efficiently into our brain’s memory storage. But it’s a theory, and nobody yet knows.
Every once in a very great while, I dream something that I remember when I wake up and it carries the intensity of a message. The dream is shaking me and saying, ‘pay attention!’. Once I dreamt that I was looking for a lost baby. When I found it – it was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. It was sitting up and looking at me with wisdom and radiant love. That baby was as close to the sacred as I will ever come – good thing I was able to find it. I remember thinking, ‘I’d better not lose this baby again.’ But of course, I lose it every day.
The crashing jet? Is it the equivalent of a standard-issue anxiety dream ramped up for these times (naked and late for an exam just doesn’t cut it anymore)? That wouldn’t surprise me. However, it also reminded me of that old joke about God’s agency versus your agency. The one where the guy is waiting for God to save him from a flood. He turns down all these people who come by because he is waiting for God to save him (I guess through a miracle). Finally, he drowns and ends up in front of God at the pearly gates. And lo! God is mad at him. God says, “I sent you a policeman with an evacuation notice before the flood, then a boat full of your neighbors after the flood, and then a helicopter with rescue equipment when the flood got so high you were on the roof. What more did you want!
So ok! Unconscious Mind, I believe I get this dream’s message. Things are going awry and quickly. But there are so many existential threats I don’t know where to begin. If you don’t mind, send me another dream with the solution.
It won’t destroy my spiritual sensibilities if dreams turn out to be nonsense. I want them to mean something. And because of that – they do mean something. A forceful dream still remains an untamed power and a mystery far beyond anything Fitbit can conjure up.
For now, I take them one dream at a time.
(Reader invitation: If you have another interpretation of my airliner dream send it on in. I won’t even mind if you give me some solutions.)