What dream do you remember most vividly? What message do you think it bears?
Although I've had many many vivid dreams and most of them will suddenly come upon me in the day with their technicolor realism, the one that immediately must be discussed relative to this question is a repeating nightmare I had when I was 4 or 5, for 6 months. It made me terrified every night to go to sleep, and I had to have the light on. I would lie awake until my sister fell asleep, so that she wouldn't notice me turning on the lamp.
The dream? The vividness for one was less of visual, aural or tactile experiences, but instead it was almost completely feeling. The details are simple – a dark wood, black trees, inky blue sky, the smell of wet dirt and damp mosses. I can't see him/her, but I know I'm being pursued and hunted and I am terrified. The air is like ice and I'm running so long and hard I can't feel my legs anymore. It's terror like I have never felt. And every time, just as I'm about to be caught because I can feel his steps behind me and the faint thump in the earth from his footfalls, I wake up.
YEARS later, I finally figure out that the source of this dream was listening to fairy tales on tape with the kid who lived downstairs from me in the apartment complex where I lived in Taipei. Where the last story we heard was Little Red Riding Hood, except that we never got the chance to finish the story before I moved overseas.
I don't know what the message of the dream itself would be, but I would say that looking at the wider story, I would argue that whether something is horror, fairy tale, romance, or a feel-good drama all depends on when you leave the story. The story doesn't end, but our part in/with it does. It's such a pedestrian "meaning" but there it is.