There are many theories in search of why we dream. Some say memory storage; Others suggest they are a basis for premonitions or subconscious thoughts. Perhaps even that there is no meaning at all. Why we dream is one of sciences biggest mysteries… but one can argue that dreams are not only a place we go when we sleep at night, but an untapped source of information. Dreams can be a place within ourselves that we can use to enrich our lives and unlock answers to roadblocks. Skeptical? Let me change your mind with five famous ideas that you will never believe came from dreams.
- The Sewing Machine
A guy dreams about getting attacked by indians and thus the sewing machine was born… seriously. The sewing machine was invited by Elias Howe in 1845, while he had the concept of a machine that would have a needle that could go through a piece of cloth he couldn’t come up with a cheap effective way to make it work until one night he had a dream. Howe dreamed that there were Indians attacking each other, firing arrows. Some arrows went trough wigwams and others through cloth. As the arrows pierced tents some snagged threats drawing them through with the tips of the arrows creating large loops of thread, these arrows had holes in the tips of the spears. He woke in the middle of his dream, rushed to his workshop and tested out to see if this would work for his sewing machine. Thus, he came up with the concept to have a curved needle with a hole at the wrong end of the needle which worked. This lead to inventors perfecting his idea and a massive expansion in the sewing machine industry. [Source]
- The Idea for Google
Larry Page, the CEO of Google, was a 22-year-old graduate student at Stanford when he dreamed the basis of an algorithm to download the entire Web and examine the link between the pages. He wrote it down when he awoke and the concept worked. He called it PageRank and used it to power a web search engine he named BackRub, which was later re-named Google. [Source]
- The Beatles write two hit songs Let it Be and Yesterday
‘Let It Be’ is one of the most famous songs written by the Beatles and in case you didn’t guess … it was conceived in a dream. According to Paul McCartney, “Let It Be’ happened during a time when there was kind of a lot going on. I think people were overdoing the use of substances. We certainy were.” “It was kind of common. It was the fashion. And anyone who remembers that time will know that. And I think I was getting, like, a little bit over the top with the whole thing – getting pretty tired and pretty wasted. And I went to bed one night and had a kind of restless night.But I had a dream where my mother, who had been dead at that point for about 10 years, came to me in the dream and it was as if she could see that I was troubled. And she sort of said to me, she said, ‘Let it be.’ And I remember quite clearly her saying ,’Let it be,’ and ‘It’s going to be OK. Don’t worry.’ You know, ‘Let it be.’ I woke up and I remembered the dream, and I thought, ‘Well, that’s a great idea.’ And I then sat down and wrote the song using the feeling from that dream and of my mum coming to me in the dream.” ‘Let It Be’ wasn’t the only hit song that came to McCartney in a dream, the tune for ‘Yesterday’ did as well. “‘Yesterday’ came to me in a dream, but at this time it wasn’t just my mom saying a phrase,” he said. “This was a whole tune that was in my head. “
4. The Twilight Saga
Whether you’re a fan of the movie or not, you know that the Twilight franchise is a block buster hit, but obviously creating a huge franchise is not science. Author Stephenie Meyer reveals the secret to her saga came to her in a dream. “It was two people in kind of a little circular meadow with really bright sunlight, and one of them was a beautiful, sparkly boy, and one was just a girl who was human and normal, and they were having this conversation,” she told Oprah in 2009. “The boy was a vampire, which is so bizarre that I’d be dreaming about vampires, and he was trying to explain to her how much he cared about her and yet at the same time how much he wanted to kill her. “I just wanted to remember it so badly. That’s why I started writing it down—not because I thought this would be a great story for a novel.” [source]
- The Periodic Table
Yes! It’s true… the basis of chemistry was discovered in a dream by nineteenth-century chemist Dimitri Mendeleyev. At the time, there were 56 known elements and while other scientists hard noticed periodicity of elements none of them could connect all the elements together in one table that correlated with all their properties… that is until Dimitri Medeleyev fell asleep. “I saw in a dream a table where all elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper, only in one place did a correction later seem necessary, “Mendeleev, as quoted by Inostrantzev Thus the basis for chemistry that we still use today was born. [Source] So, while people can speculate as to why we dream, it’s clear that if we choose to find the beauty in them we can unlock amazing things within us. Please share with me if you have had a similar dream story in the comments below!