Love & Dreams (True & False)

November 19, 2024

It is occasionally amusing to believe that when we dream of someone, it carries a significance beyond the contents of our own subconscious: that this person’s appearance in our dream is indicative of some real connection between us and them, rather than a one-sided fantasy. We may choose to believe that the dream is a vision bestowed upon us by some higher power, and that the person we dream of may be experiencing the same or a similar dream around the same time. We may also, if we find ourselves in a particular mood, wonder whether the person in question entered our dream of their own volition.

For example:

“I first dreamt of you almost one year after our final parting. I say that as if I take responsibility for your appearance — in truth, I believe that in some way, it was your own doing. I was in the dingy back room at work, finishing the last sips of a cabbage soup. I was cold, and the space heater was heating only my left leg. Perhaps it was this sensation, this warmth by my side, that brought you to my mind. As I closed my eyes for a brief respite from the drudgery of another sad, lonely day, I saw you, on the far side of the store, standing behind the counter, dressed just as you had been when I last saw you. A darkness crept in around you, a great fear overtook your face, and you screamed to me in terror. I woke with a start. You had been calling for me. I desperately wished that I knew your phone number, and could phone you, because I knew in that moment that if I had done so, I would have found you at some impossible, perfect moment. But I had no way of contacting you, ignorant as I am of whatever power it is that allows you to sneak into my dreams.”

It is true that, upon waking, I earnestly believed what I wrote in this passage. It is also true that I desperately wanted to believe it. I had this feeling that love forged its own path; I could think of no other way to explain why two people could like each other so much based on nothing but a few words and a smile. Left with no other option, I decided that love was fated. Judging from my previous experiences, I decided that impossibility was part of its nature. Love made promises that reality could not keep. Love allowed her into my dream; reality left me without her telephone number.

In George Sand’s novel, Laura, A Journey into Crystal, we find a girl who can (supposedly) manifest herself within other people’s dreams. The main character, Alexis, a bumbling young man who has been given a job at his uncle’s geological museum, finds himself continually stumbling into feverish visions inspired by the crystal formations within the exhibits. One moment he will be staring into a gem, and the next he will be unconscious, imagining himself transported into a crystalline landscape. There, he is accompanied by his cousin Laura, but not the everyday countryside Laura that often mocks his idle behaviour. The Laura that appears in his dreams is more beautiful, graceful, and spiritually complex than her real-world counterpart. When he awakes from his dreams, he finds it impossible to reconcile the two.

Much of the latter half of the novel takes place within an extended vision, as Alexis lapses in and out of consciousness. This hallucinatory Jules Verne-style adventure finds him delving deeper and deeper into the world of Crystal. In real life, he understands that Laura is engaged to be married to his unimaginative instrumentally-minded colleague; however, in his dream, Laura reveals that this entire betrothal is a sham, and that Alexis is her true love. This is because, just like how Dream Laura towers over Real Laura, Dream Alexis is a much more handsome and put-together individual than the directionless Alexis of the real world.

Dream Laura explains that their earthly forms are but inferior manifestations of their true selves, which can only appear in dreams. This introduces a paradoxical real-false dichotomy that parallels that of Dream of Red Mansions:

When false is taken for true, true becomes false;
If non-being turns into being, being becomes non-being.

While the main character’s visions are explicitly dreams, usually accompanied by fainting or bouts of feverish delirium, the above metaphysical system does end up appearing to be "true.” Dream Laura tells Alexis that Real Laura does love him, despite never showing it at all and being engaged to another man. Their love, however, will only work if he can appreciate both sides of her — both her perfect dream self and her imperfect earthly self. This information is, in fact, accurate, as is revealed when the two speak after Alexis emerges from his final dream. It turns out that they were in love with each other this whole time, despite none of their prior real-life interactions indicating that this is so.

Love, in its early stages, is often based on such ideal forms. The person you fall in love with is not the person you see before you, but your idea of who they might be. This idea carries you forward during those initial cautious dates, where neither party is capable of revealing their full selves. As time passes, contradictions appear between the ideal form and the real form. The two do not line up. Reality gradually supersedes the fantasy, but that Ideal Love still remains — that Love based on little but a few words and a smile. You can not honestly say that you love them because of qualities you learned about later: their intelligence; their patience; the weird expressions they make at various moments — no, the love was there already. The love was there from the very beginning, as an explosion that burst out of thin air.

Why did it appear? Is it possible that, in that moment, deep in your subconscious mind, you became aware of their True Self, invisible to the conscious eye? That the two of you journeyed into a land of Crystal, learned all there is to know about each other, and now must merely wait for your laggardly earthly forms to catch up?

But this is only true when it works. Many times, this ideal love comes to naught, trampled by the whims of reality. Perhaps you live in different countries. Perhaps you barely speak the same language. Perhaps your earthly selves actually have nothing in common and don’t like each other at all. As Hugh Laurie sings in the song, “Mystery,”

I'd be foolish to ignore the possibility
That if we had ever actually met, you might have hated me

This being part of why he calls his love for her a “mystery.” And after all the reflecting I have done over my years of heartstop and heartbreak, I would be hard-pressed to describe love any other way.

With all this mystery surrounding us, is it any wonder that we turn to dreams for an explanation? I have always dreamed of those I’ve loved and lost, as well as those I’ve loved and never found at all. I’ve dreamed my way in and out of love, all with the individuals in question being none the wiser. It is easy to say that my dreams are lonely affairs, conversations between myself and the ghosts that live in my head. But is it not possible that sometimes they are something more? That once, or maybe twice, the person on the other end of that love did dream a dream, or at least felt a spark, at that same moment? That we were perhaps connected in some way that our waking minds can neither describe nor define? And that the two of us, believing ourselves alone, failed to acknowledge that we were truly together?

Love itself is an impossible thing — it would not do to underestimate it.