Do you have 100 of your dreams written down?

We do.

This year, I recorded my one hundredth dream since beginning to journal in 2017.

When I was around eight or ten years old, I began to realize that my dreams stayed with me long after I woke. Some I carried consciously for years: a small Black boy with an afro climbing a ladder beside me, Clint Eastwood chasing me through a dark Madison Square Garden with a shovel, or my old spotted dog walking with me down a dirt road until the zipper of a tent returned me to a place of childhood trauma.

Certain dreams became familiar companions. One in particular repeated over many years. I eventually nicknamed it my dream bridge. It became a kind of refuge that often appeared after difficult days. Only after I understood where that bridge was leading me did the dream quietly disappear. It never returned.

Over the last nine years, on average, I’ve recorded roughly eleven dreams each year. That may not sound like many, but it represents more dreams than most people consciously remember over an entire lifetime. I’m proud of that—not because of the number itself, but because it has allowed me to witness patterns that a handful of dreams could never reveal.

With practice, my memory has changed. Dreams certainly become more vivid during emotionally intense periods of life, but even in quieter weeks I now wake remembering textures, lighting, dialogue, expressions, and transitions between scenes with surprising clarity. The stories still unfold in that wonderfully dreamlike way: I was here, then there, then somewhere else entirely. Yet the narrative somehow holds together.

Over time, recurring motifs begin to emerge. They often appear repeatedly: a black horse, two boys, two girls, a missing bag, certain houses, particular malls. There is a dark-haired woman who frequently appears as a quiet witness or protector. There is also a dark-haired man who more often steals from me, stalks me, or threatens my sense of safety and agency.

Lately, however, I’ve become just as interested in what doesn’t appear.

The omissions fascinate me as much as the symbols themselves.

Who never arrives?

Which roles are consistently absent?

What relationships are never explored?

Sometimes what the dream refuses to show becomes just as meaningful as what it places center stage.

I’ve also been surprised by the coherence between dreams, even when weeks pass without writing one down. There are mornings when I simply don’t have the energy to record them. Then, when I finally do, the next dream often feels as though the story quietly continued without me, picking up themes and symbols exactly where they had last been left.

Reading old dreams is equally surprising. I rarely remember them in detail. When I revisit an entry, I often laugh or shake my head in disbelief. They feel strangely familiar and completely foreign at the same time—as though someone else wrote them while somehow knowing me intimately.

Another pattern has become increasingly apparent. My dreams seem to recap my life over and over again. They revisit old relationships, forgotten places, childhood memories, and recurring symbols, weaving decades together until they arrive at the present moment. It feels less like repetition and more like integration. The dreams return to the same material until something within me finally understands it.

After one hundred dreams, I don’t feel like I’ve become an expert on dreams.

If anything, I’ve become more comfortable not knowing.

What occupies me now are questions of discernment, orientation, and belonging. How do we recognize what is truly ours? How do we find our way when life feels disorienting? Where—and with whom—do we belong?

My child and I occasionally share our dreams with one another. Those conversations have become some of my favorite moments. Dreams reveal something difficult to explain but easy to recognize when someone shares them honestly. They create a sense of connection that doesn’t depend on agreement or interpretation.

One of my instructors at the Jung Center of Houston once quoted John Keats’ idea of negative capability: the capacity to remain “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

After one hundred dreams, I think that may be the greatest lesson of all.

Not to solve every symbol.

Not to force every answer.

But to remain present with curiosity, allowing meaning to emerge in its own time.

Dreams have taught me that understanding rarely arrives all at once. More often it comes quietly, over years, through repeated images, familiar landscapes, and stories that patiently wait until we’re finally ready to hear them.