The Wham | New Modern Hanging Art Mobile by Mark Leary
Mobile: The Wham (42” wide x 22” tall)
On dreams
“I dreamt it,” explained rabbit. “So I know it’s real.”
In a 40-year study that surveyed 50,000 college kids, researcher Calvin S. Hall determined that the most common feeling people report having in their dreams is anxiety, followed closely by anger, sadness, and fear.
I came across this study this morning as I was reading about Dmitri Mendeleev, the guy who invented the periodic table. He says, “I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required.”
Did you know that, over the course of your life, you’ll likely have over a hundred thousand dreams? If anxiety is the key theme, think about how many times that means you’ll dream about waking up late, being naked in public, and trying to scream but having no voice. And much harder things.
Think about your little brain during sleep, and how hard it’s working to process all the information it’s a received over the course of the day: Stress, doubt, hurt, fear, loneliness. All just so we can wake up to more of it.
In Hawaiian, the word for dream can be translated as "soul sleep.” Imagine that for a moment. Fluffing the pillows, pulling up the covers, tucking in the deepest part of you; kissing it on the forehead and giving it a safe, warm, quiet place to retreat.
This mobile is about to be on its way to soon-to-be new parents. It’ll spin overhead as their baby sleeps, wakes, poops, cries, laughs, grows, clings to, and – yes – dreams. It will be a pop of color, a bright background to the deep, resonant comfort and protection that is a parents’ love.
As I put the finishing touches on it this morning, I’m thinking about what we can do for each other – in the waking world – to create opportunities for such comfort and love, a place “where all the elements fall into place,” so our dreams don’t have to do so much heavy lifting, where we can protect, support, and lift up the dreams of the newest members of our human tribe, as well as each others’.
What’s one thing you can do today that will help ease the stress of or brighten a moment for another?