Reiko Mochizuki Series Episode 84: People Forget Dreams

When you wake up, the content of your dreams gradually fades away.
In the same way, as people age, they gradually lose their memories of reality as well.
So, is it the brain that is forgetting, or is it the soul?

Reiko, a caregiver, sees patients with dementia in her daily life.

"My son is still in elementary school, so I have to go pick him up."
"I have to go home."

For them, that is the reality of this very moment.

On the other hand, during Savasana, Reiko herself forgets "who she was looking for" every time.

Every time she wakes from a dream, her memory fades,
and every time she returns to reality, the dream disappears.

And one day, Reiko realizes something.

Perhaps dementia is not a disease of breaking down, but a state where memories of another world are gradually overlapping.

In the morning, I wake up.

Even if I try to remember the dream I was just having, within a few minutes the outlines blur and eventually disappear.

"I feel like it was an important dream."

Sometimes, only that feeling remains.

I work as a nurse, interacting with people who have dementia.

People who forget what happened yesterday.

People who can no longer remember the faces of their family.

People who repeat the same stories over and over.

Medically speaking, dementia is a disease of the brain.

But sometimes, I wonder about something.

We forget our dreams.

People with dementia forget their memories of reality.

Where does the difference lie?

In Buddhism, there is a teaching that "the world we think is reality might also be like a dream."

While we are dreaming, we believe it is reality.

Only when we wake up do we realize, "It was a dream."

What if this current life is also in the middle of a long dream?

What would we wake up to?

And what is the memory that truly remains until the very end?

Thinking about such things, I face my patients again today, and at night, I practice Savasana in yoga.

Every time I close my eyes, the boundary between dream and reality becomes a little more ambiguous.

I, who forget my dreams.

They, who forget reality.

Beyond that boundary, there may be a world that no one knows yet.

*This text is a creative work and essay based on Buddhist worldviews and ideas about dreams. Dementia is medically a brain disease, and this text is not intended to explain its causes or mechanisms.