To sleep, perchance to dream

Ok so this post doesn't have much to do with suicidal thoughts. Cos that'd make me an emo :-P

I am one of those people that needs generous amounts of sleep. 8-9 hours is what I need every night in order not to feel tired or fatigued the next day. Each and every one of us who has been a student in a particularly hectic course has tried to cheat our need for sleep. Each of us has tried to study/work/attend uni with minimal amounts and usually failed in our attempts to achieve maximum performance. I remember most of my university days cursing my body's need for sleep. I remember many conversations joking about inventing a pill that equated to a few hours of sleep. "Wouldn't we be rich from that! No need to sleep anymore!"

So why DO we need sleep? It seems like such a silly concept. For the body (and mind) to require a complete shut down for a third of the day. Is it because we need a rest period for our brain to process and catalogue all that we did during the day? I think it has much more to do with the mind resting than the body. It's funny how biological beings require rest to perform better. However, with something like a car, it will run for longer kms if left running (eg like the cars used for taxis) than being turned on and off again continuously. I guess if we stayed awake all the time, the mind wouldn't be able to keep up and short circuit or something. But then wouldn't that be a flaw of design? Why not have a brain that can actively process and put away concepts and thoughts whilst we are awake. And it's not like our brain isn't active during sleep. We dream. 

I dream alot. I dream of random things. REALLY random things. From buying chicken wings and juice on special (so that I open up the fridge and wonder where I put them? Nope must have dreamt about it!) to dreaming of being a young Chinese girl in a war torn country. I find that my dreams are in colour and I can remember in great detail. One dream I had, I could remember flicking through pages of a clothes magazine. It's amazing to think that my mind CREATED this magazine, the format, what the model looked like, what position the model was in, the clothes the model was wearing, the font that the descriptions were written in. And sometimes when I wake up I can remember the smells in my dream, or even the taste. 

One of my friends told me that he hardly dreamt at all, or if he knew he did then he wouldn't remember them, let alone them be as vivid as mine. They say that vivid dreams indicate that you have a creative mind. Now it would be good if I could harness this for my art!