Dreams are another way of telling that we are alive. Dreams, they are that subtle difference between coma and dormant vivacity, a unique border between life and death not just literally but also figuratively.
We generally dream when we sleep. When a person sleeps there is no way one can differentiate him from one in severe coma. But it is that asleep man's dreaming that notifies that he is not in coma more importantly that he is "alive". When one sleeps, theoretically all of his mind and body should be at rest. However dreams occur as even at rest the brain keeps on wobbling with pre-stored information the brain does a collage with links .and dreams are formed. .
In a metaphorical sense dreams inform us that we have "life", that we have vivacity, that we are alive. In our tiny steel and concrete kingdoms we have given ourselves the status of robots. Everything we do is "scheduled". We have timed our fun, care ,duty, sleep, meals everything. We have made ourselves pre-programmed versatile organic robots. Yet even during these dire moments when Nature should weep seeing her children become " un-natural" she doesn't weep . for there remains one word that keeps us alive, "naturally"--- dreams.
Unlike robots we dream and we remind ourselves that we are human beings. In mighty cities , where we run day and night with no apparent purpose in life, it's our dreams that motivate us. Today dreams are the engines of mankind. For that MBA from Harvard it's dreams that keeps him moving up the ladder; for that tramp in NY it's dreams that tell him to go on. For any artificial robot all these would be pre-stored missions to accomplish and it would never reason it it would do because it had to. This is where man differs from machines. A man conjures dreams, modifies them and builds on them. He tries to materialize his dreams and in the process does something he wishes to and his wishes remain independent of his circumstances.