Dream a Little Dream

I had a thought this morning that turned into a theory that would probably get me tossed into a nut house if I ever shared it. Settle in folks; it’s time for some crazy.

I’ve never had reoccurring dreams. And while I dream every night (yup, every single night), I find the lack of repetitiveness concerning. For years I’ve been regaled of other peoples’ horrific, unending slumber tales and yet I was unable to create my own. Not that I yearned for my teeth to fall out or to splatter from a great height, but I was convinced there was something wrong with me. You know, more than the usual ailments.

Then I woke from a familiar place this morning. A place I had known before, but differently. It’s then I began my decent into the rabbit hole of ridiculous theories and settle upon a theory of infinite, parallel universes.

If you entertain the idea that once your conscious self stops overthinking the workings of this world, it allows for a passageway to open between various universes, then it really makes perfect sense. What if as you sleep, your mind connects to your alternate lives, giving you short bursts of unworldly knowledge? As you sleep, you’re able to access the memories of the alternate you and live the life you could have lived if the universe had made different choices. Unfortunately, this world has groomed people to believe that these are simply scenarios your brain creates in order to reckon with what you did or did not do during your waking hours. How sad for you.

This would mean that somewhere in the vast expanse of universe, my brother has the ability to morph into a massive gorilla and fight off the Godzilla-like creature that terrorizes our family yard. In a different corner, I marry my high school physics teacher and have a baby whom I openly curse, before watching a grown man change a 13 year old boy’s diaper. He has constant projectile diarrhea. In yet another, my brothers and I once had a tragic battle on a rundown farm against an army of China men. We died there. I die in others too, but by drastically different means: apocalyptic battle wounds, car crash, decapitation, jousting, choking on a jellyfish, and in one memorable universe, where we were defeated by the color yellow.

But after I die in these so called “dreams,” I never return to that world. They’re all unique and brilliantly designed, but once I’m gone, so are they. Sometimes it’s just me, pitted against an unknown foe with faceless allies. Sometimes even my acclaimed allies turn against me. Sometimes I truly am fighting the battle alone. Then there are those that are no battle at all, but have me wandering down a bustling city street with a sense of purpose, yet no destination. The worlds I survive are the ones I return to, but the scene is set differently for each visit. Before my untimely death during a jousting match, I groomed my horse, was a victor in the games, and ravished a ginger fellow in the mud next to the pigs, all over the course of four years of “sleep.” I know people say those who read or game have lived a thousand lives but I believe we all do, all at the same time.

These are not the result of an overactive imagination that is squelched into near nonexistence during the daily grind. People think outlandish theories are so far beyond improbable, that they dare to label them as impossible. But some of the greatest discoveries were once impossibilities, so why not this?