DAYDREAMS OR NIGHTMARES

A Japanese proverb states, "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."

Modern people are caught in a cruel dilemma. Cultures impose upon individuals a sense of what is expected of them during their lifetime. Families also impose certain structures, values and goals upon their children which may or may not be realistic. Early experiences shape future actions more than people realize, especially the psychological underpinnings of self-esteem, self-worth, shyness, openness or personal anxieties.

The biggest governor in a person's life is the hard wired defense mechanism that a person does not want to get hurt. Hurt, being physical or emotional. As we grow older, the emotional buffer grows stronger because the mental pain of rejection hits deeper.

This post will not get into whether LOST was a daydream or nightmare premise of some character(s).

It is interesting to look deeper into the proverb's claim.

The hardest thing a person has do mentally is set forth action to overcome a difficult thought.

The classic example of this is a young man getting the courage and inner strength to ask his crush for a date.  The ramifications for him are huge. If she says yes, then the weight of the world melts from his shoulders. She likes him. OK. That is the start he was looking for (nervous success to follow). But if she says no, then the young man is crushed. He let himself be venerable by asking the question with the high expectation of a "yes" answer. This experience of pain can haunt him, especially the next time a similar situation happens in his life.

Everyone's mind is a set of dominoes of these types of experiences. One may set off a chain reaction of withdrawal from society. One may set off a relief valve of wayward expectations being corralled into common sense. It is how people work out and balance the fear factor to the potential reward is how one can live a meaningful and happy life.

A happy life is not necessarily what other people give you. A happy life is what you make of yourself.

But if you are leading an unfulfilled  life, one may get more and more caught up in the daydream of a better life. In your mind, the perfect world can be created to insulate yourself from the pain, fear and pressures of interacting with real people. When a daydream takes over a person's focus and bleeds into their daily routine, the person becomes their own anti-social island. Within the confines of their dream island, nothing can go wrong or hurt them because they control the outcome.

But in real life, you don't control the outcome of events. It may be random chance, hard work or a factor of opportunity over latent skill that leads to variable results. You can do the same thing over and over again to get variable results. There are infinite possibilities even in finite situations.

But if the insulated daydream takes over you to the point of not being able to cope in normal, real world situations (which makes your work suffer, your family estranged, or become a shut-in without friends), you create your own island prison of self-contempt.

It is tough to reverse that course because a person builds up layers of defenses to keep from feeling any bad memory pain. The more the defenses, the more difficult it is to open up your mind to gauge reality from fiction.

Hurley is probably the best example of this daydream-nightmare dynamic. His parental abandonment led to deep seated pain and anxiety about his self-worth. He was depressed to the point of changing his appearance to keep people away. He became secretive. He became a wall flower. When he had the courage to ask the record store girl to go out with him, he was on top of the world until his one best friend turned on him - - - after he kept his lottery winnings to himself. Hurley lost the girl and his friend. He retreated more into his fantasy world (creating imaginary friend, Dave, to take the place of everyone who had hurt him).  But it was actually Dave's last appearance on the island that was the path for Hurley to break free of his daydream nightmare. He had to leap off the cliff of self-delusion in order to "wake up" to the reality that he is a good, nice person who had a place in the real world. People would like him. He could find new friends. He could find a good job. He could find a girl and be happy.

But Libby, his dream girl, stopped Hurley from making that great mental leap. And that is the pull of the dream world - - - it keeps one in a safe illusion of happiness even though you are hurting your chances to find real happiness.

Hurley is symbolic of the average person caught between the expectations of others and their own personal issues or demons. You want to be accepted by your peers. You want to make your parents proud. You want to enjoy what you do. But the voice in your head keeps telling you that if you take that action, you will be sorry.

The greatest regrets in life are those "what if" moments of inaction. If you act and fail, then chalk it up to experience. If you don't act (and don't get a positive or negative result), then you are stuck in personal quicksand and that opportunity is lost.

As you can tell, many LOST themes are woven into this situation, including illusion, island, regret, depression, mental issues, and friendship. The idea of self-growth being self-directed is the base line coda of human life. You cannot wait for someone to come by to make you instantly happy. It never happens that way - - - even in the movies.

NON-DREAMERS

Whether they are reliving childhood anxieties or visiting imaginary landscapes, most people dream.

But there’s a small subset of the population who claims either to have stopped dreaming, or never to have dreamed at all. A group of researchers recently decided to look into the sleep patterns of self-proclaimed non-dreamers, to try to determine whether they may still be producing dreams.
The researchers, whose study was published in the Journal of Sleep Research  recruited a unique group of participants. They wanted to look specifically at people who have REM sleep behavior disorder—a condition that causes people to act out their dreams. Because people with the disorder move around or speak in their sleep, their sleep patterns and behaviors are easier for scientists to observe.

According to New York Magazine, four percent of the participants in the 289 person study said they never dreamed or hadn’t dreamed in over a decade. However, upon observation, many of them appeared to dream, moving, speaking, or reenacting imaginary scenarios in their sleep. For example, one participant in his 70s, who claimed not to have dreamed since his 20s, was observed arguing with, punching, and swearing at an invisible enemy as he slept. Upon waking, however, he claimed not to have had any dreams.

The researchers recognize that the appearance of dream behavior is not definitive proof of dream production. More research is still needed to determine whether behaviors like sleep-talking and moving correspond to actual mental images. Still, the study provides strong initial evidence that non-dreamers may, in fact, be dreaming. 

This is an interesting study to apply to the sideways world when the characters "forgot" about all their time on the island.

If alleged "non-dreamers" dream but don't remember their dreams, does that not fit the pattern or premise of the sideways world? The characters had to be "jolted" into remembering their past. For Jack, it was touching his father's coffin. 

So if we transpose this scientific observation into the LOST story line, we get this possible explanation.

We know that the sideways world was the after life because Christian told Jack that everyone in teh church was dead.

Being dead, the characters could not "remember" their island time or the other characters.

Now, there would be two possible explanations of this: 1) the dead souls don't have clear recall of their past lives or 2) the dead souls can vividly dream (and probably collectively).

Now, many other researchers have been studying the purpose of dreams. Some believe it is a way humans try to solve real life problems in a safe and secure fashion. Some believe that dreams are a way for the body to rest and recharge (but the mind has to always be active since it controls all bodily functions). 

Why would the dead need to dream?

Perhaps, the same way the living do: in order to sort through their problems, anxieties, fears, and regrets in order to become self-aware, self-assured and self-healed in order to "move on."

Whether in work or relationships, some people do get bogged down to the point of being unhappily stuck in a situation or hurt from a missed opportunity. This paralysis can be long lasting and bitter.

The dead LOST souls needed a means of reviewing the errors in the lives, making peace with the choices that they made in life, and accept who they were in order to move on in the afterlife.

So it is possible, despite the similar living issues and problems the characters had, each of them were also "non-dreamers" who could not remember working out their issues in their own minds.

DREAM

"There are anxieties from dreams that are more real
Than the ones life brings; there are sensations
Felt only by imagining them
That are more ours than our very own life.
There are countless things that exist
Without existing, that lastingly exist
And lastingly are ours, they’re us…"

Fernando Pessoa