A Disquieting Thought for my Later Days...

After going through a phase of storing my dreams in "memory temples" (imaginary worlds used to store memories) and writing only a few words on pieces of paper that I threw away after a week, writing down only my interesting dreams, I have decided to get back into daily complete journaling.
:fame:

A weird thought came to me... If I write down my dreams from this day on... What will happen in my 90s (or later, whatever happens with human health in that far distance), and if I fall victim to some type of dementia, losing memories of my past... I will still have a complete collection of every dream I have ever remembered, but not of the events of my waking life. As I sit in a retirement home in 2085, reading my dream journals from the young '20s, what will be my thoughts on my life?

What would be the effects of having more dream memories than waking memories?

[Edit] Hmm... I might have exaggerated with the title. They're not disquieting thoughts, simply curious. :)

Hm, this is certainly an interesting scenario. As I'm sure you'll know you'll be reading your dream journal, you won't confuse the dreams as actual events in your lifetime. Even though you will have forgotten the memories you experienced throughout your entire life, your dreams would offer almost a raw and albeit confusing look at your emotions, lifestyle, interests, and struggles. An example of this could be during your 30's you might be stressed out and working hard, so your dreams would reflect that moment in your life. During your 40-50's, maybe you settle down and relax more, and therefor your dreams will reflect that as well. Hell, maybe even dreams could trigger back some forgotten memories for somebody like this.

I don't know, it's always fun discussing "what if" scenarios, but what I typed up above could possibly be the effects of what you described.

Well, if you live a full enough dream life, perhaps those journals will illustrate the real you well enough to give your addled old self a clear picture of who you once were and how you lived.

You could always keep a waking-life journal as well...

I agree with both of you, Therome and Sageous, I think it can only be pleasant, to have those memories, and perhaps, from a removed perspective (that of being much older than when I had those dreams), I might even be able to interpret them better, as you say Therome.

I talk to elderly people, some with Alzheimer's every week, and they tell me stories every time, most often than not, they are the same stories they tell me. It's fun, because it's like a puzzle. Those stories, out of context, are almost as likely as dreams, and with time, I can put them together. The way these elderly people talk, talking over and over about those same events, with as much passion and story telling skills as the last time, it seems to me that they must be spending a lot of time with these events in their heads, as if they were stuck in those few schema. It just always feels dreamy, when I'm with them, so I wonder what it would be if the schemas they kept repeating were those of dreams. It wouldn't be bad, both are important. :)

I do have a journal in which I develop my life philosophy, and goals, and some waking events do flow into it, but I wouldn't put as much detail in a waking journal as in a dream journal, because waking events are that much easier to remember (I did write everything when I traveled though), and we won't all suffer from dementia. Hopefully, lucid dreaming is another of those dementia prevention techniques.