Illustration: Luo Xuan/GT

I look around and can't recognize where I am. It seems familiar but distant. I see my friends gathered by a stage where music is playing and I run over. As I begin running towards them, they become further and further away. I keep calling for them, but no one hears me. Just then, I turn around and I am in a large house with my mom calling me down for dinner. What is going on here?  

 I start hearing a distant alarm-like sound and I am transported away. I woke up in a daze sitting in my bed.

"Oh, it was only a dream," I said to myself. I have always had vivid and intense dreams. Sometimes, it feels like I haven't even slept because I have been living out my dreams during my sleep. What's even weirder is that my dreams usually have reoccurring themes of me being at a music festival or in a cabin with friends and family.

Today, dreaming is being studied even more than ever. Some say that dreams are how your receptors make sense of random thoughts while you sleep. Some say that you can't dream of a face you have never seen before, so everyone you see in your dreams you have at least laid eyes on at one time or another.

Other people think dreams are ways of expressing stress or internal feelings you may be experiencing. A lot of people say that they have dreams about being chased.

A common interpretation of the "being chased" dream is that you are feeling threatened. Some dream interpretation sites say you should try to reflect on what or who is chasing you to get a better idea of what is making you feel this way.

Another dream that is often experienced is flying. This dream has a much more positive interpretation, which is that you are feeling free or have broken out of a bad situation such as a relationship turned sour or a job you hate.

Unfortunately, if you even remember your dreams at all, you forget half of your dream within five minutes of waking up and within 10 minutes, you usually forget 90 percent of it.

"Dreamologists," people who devote time to the study and interpretation of dreams, suggest if you want to try to remember and study your dreams you should keep a journal beside your bed and jot down what you dreamt as soon as you wake up so you can reflect on it later.

That's exactly what I am going to do so I can keep track of what subconscious thoughts bubble up and find out what mysteries my brain may be unlocking while I sleep.

This article was published on the Global Times Metropolitan section Two Cents page, a space for reader submissions, including opinion, humor and satire. The ideas expressed are those of the author alone, and do not represent the position of the Global Times.