My most vivid and memorable dreams seem to come during the purest moments of clarity in my life. These nights do not necessarily coincide with the times thatI’m most at peace, nor those when I’m most confident about my own path in this life. Rather, these dreams of consequence seep through my subconscious when I allow myself the space, either physical or mental, to crowd out all the thoughts, worries, pains and joys that clog my daily thought patterns and leave scant room for free thinking.

I have a strong belief in the subconscious—not only that it exists, which few would refute—but that it holds a place in everyday life. I believe the subconscious has a power to tap forgotten memories and ideas, irretrievable by the conscious mind, which wield significant influence over one’s daily life. For me, the purest manifestations come in two forms: the first is what we refer to as a ‘gut reaction’ or an intangible opinion with no conscious or founded reason, and the second in the form of dreams.

In my own sentient life, I find certain decisions and warnings delivered through my subconscious, but in my dream life, these same ideas seem to manifest through visual storytelling. When I’m able to quiet all the noise in life before I sleep, these stories often take on meaning, becoming parables in a way.

I have one recurring dream of this nature, which seems more than just a rambling storyline. In this dream, I splash from one significant experience to another, waves of light and color rippling before they come into focus. The space between these experiences feels like traveling weightless in hyper speed for a mere instant. This continues from one social or isolated experience in my life to the next until I wake.

The piece that stands out in the scenario, and remains a constant is the kind of experience. In the dream, I have an overwhelming understanding that these are the most important moments in my life, yet they are not the typical defining points. The experiences in the dream are never the big assignment, or the top of the mountain, or the graduation. Instead, the occurrences in my dreams are about a passing conversation, a laugh shared with a loved one, a drive to get to the big destination, and a walk on a bracing summer evening.

The dream reminds me that it is not the grand achievements and destination points along the way that will define me in my own eyes when I meet my end, but all the little spaces in between. It is these types of realizations and intuition that I have come to trust my subconscious with, more so than my conscious reasoning.

This is the dream that urges me to seek, to capture with my camera those fleeting dream-like moments of the spaces in between in my waking life.