I think dreams might be us experiencing parallel timelines
I’ve had this weird theory for a few years now, and it started because of one specific dream. It was literally just… my day. The exact same day I had before going to sleep, the exact same setting, the exact same everything, except for one tiny thing: in the dream, I went outside. In reality, I stayed home. I just lived the same day but made the opposite choice. I couldn't help wondering like, what was the point of that dream?
Then I remembered another dream I had years ago where me and my aunt were being chased by a velociraptor from Jurassic Park. Ridiculous, yes. But I never managed to shake the feeling of how different those two dreams were.
I’ve talked to friends about this, and most of them seem to have two types of dreams: the ones that feel almost like real life, and the ones that feel like you’re in a totally different universe.
So I was wondering, what if dreams aren’t just random, or subconscious symbolism. What if dreams are literally you seeing through the eyes of yourself in a parallel universe?
Like, in one universe you stayed home, and in another you went outside. In one universe you talked to that stranger you walked past, and in another that stranger wasn't even there. In one universe dinosaurs were brought back, who knows!
Also, with the people we dream about, the brain can’t invent faces. Science says every face you see in a dream is someone you’ve seen before. But people dream of strangers all the time. Strangers they swear they’ve never met. So where do those faces come from? Maybe from the version of your life where you did meet them?
In some dreams, you end up having full‑on arguments or emotional conversations with people you don’t even know. Like you’re defending yourself, or you’re mad at them, or they’re mad at you, and the whole situation feels real even though you’ve never met this person in your actual life.
I’m not claiming this is scientific or anything. It’s a theory I’ve had stuck in my head for years. Why some dreams feel like alternate memories. Why some feel like different worlds. Why dream characters act like real people.
There is the theory that anything that can happen, will or has happened, if that's the case, maybe, when we dream, we can see moments of said universes where different choices were made, not just by you, but by everyone.