Now and again I have had horrible dreams, but not enough of them to make me lose my delight in dreams. To begin with, I like the idea of dreaming, of going to bed and lying still and then, by some queer magic, wandering into another kind of existence. As a child I could never understand why grown-ups took dreaming so calmly when they could make such a fuss about any holiday. This still puzzles me. I am mystified (迷惑的) by people who say they never dream and appear to have no interest in the subject. It is much more astonishing than if they said they never went out for a walk. Most people or at least more Western Europeans do not seem to accept dreaming as part of their lives. They appear to see it as an irritating little habit, like sneezing or yawning.
I have never understood this. My dream life does not seem as important as my waking life, if only because there is far less of it, but to me it is important. As if there were at least two extra continents added to the world, and lightning excursions running to them at any moment between midnight and breakfast. Then again, the dream life, though queer and confusing and unsatisfactory in many respects, has its own advantages. The dead are there, smiling and talking. The part is there, sometimes all broken and confused but occasionally as fresh as a daisy. And perhaps, as Mr. Dunne tells us, the future is there too, winking at us. This dream life is often overshadowed (蒙上阴影) by huge mysterious anxieties, with luggage that cannot be packed and trains that refuse to be caught; and both persons and scenes there are not as dependable and solid as they are in waking life, so that Brown and Smith merge into one person while Robinson splits into two, and there are thick woods outside the bathroom door and the dining room is somehow part of a theatre balcony; and there are moments of loneliness or terror in the dream world that are worse than anything we have known under the sun. Yet this other life has its interests, its happiness, its satisfactions, and at certain rare intervals, a serene glow or a sudden joy, like glimpses of another from of existence altogether, that we cannot match with open eyes. Silly or wise, terrible or excellent, it is a further helping of experience, a bonus after dark, another slice of life cut differently, for which, it seems to me, we are never sufficiently grateful. Only a dream! Why only It was there and you had it.
"If there were dreams to sell," Beddoes inquires, "what would you pay" I cannot say off hand, but certainly the price would be rather more than I could afford.
In the author’s opinion, we should thank a dream because______.