On the Wisdom of Dreams

“I am apt to think that the wisest men dream the most inconsistently. For as the judgment has nothing or very little to do in regulating the circumstances of a dream, it necessarily follows that the more powerful and creative the imagination is, the wilder it runs in that state of unrestrained invention; while those who are unable to wander out of the track of common thinking when awake, never exceed the boundaries of common nature when asleep.”
-Thomas Paine

Some say that dreams or nothing more than the random firings of neurons of a brain in the depths of sleep; others map out exact interpretations of a dream as if it were a common thing.

Dreams are neither random or common; they are a storehouse of imagination, a story-teller that we hear only in the quiet of the night. The stories they tell open a whole world that may, if we are listening, bring our waking life into sharper focus.