HW9: Dream On!

Have you ever experienced having story sessions with your grandparents, telling you stories on how the sampaguitas came to this earth, or why pineapples look that way. Because I sure did!

I can still remember when I went to a play outside the church in our province with my grandmother. The play was about the legend of the lansones fruit. It was a good play and the plot was interesting, and being a kid, I actually believed what the play suggested to be the origin of the fruit.

Filipinos are known for all the myths about almost anything. And we have so many stories that are very interesting and can really make you think after hearing them. We have all sorts of stories about almost anything under the sun, clearly a unique characteristic of Philippine culture.

One of the interesting Filipino myths is about dreams. We have some myths about what dreams really are. Though some may be quite the same as to the other beliefs about dreams, you can still see the Filipino touch. The first Filipino myth about dreams is all about the urban legend batibat.

According to Ilokano legends, the batibat is a magical creature that sits on the person while he or she is sleeping, causing the dreamer to have nightmares, suffocate, then die in the process. This is quite disturbing if you ask me, since this story is mostly relied on little kids. This story would usually scare children and can even cause fear of sleeping, if you think of the worst thing that could happen.

Another myth that I have researched, according to the article “Philippine Myths on Dreams”, is about dreams being souls or spirits that travel. The article says that once the person is asleep, his body and soul separates, then the soul actually travels in the dream land, which is like the real world, with a few weird aspects like how running can be either too fast or too slow. Also according to the article, “This explains why, says this Philippine myth, lots of people feel they have been in a place they have actually never visited before.” That is why, we Filipinos are fond of saying “I know this place!” or “I think I've been here before.”

Filipinos are also fond of saying that dreams are actually hints or actually glimpse of the future. This may sound familiar, because this is also a definition of dreams by many dream enthusiasts but we tend to take this belief a level higher. Remember your mother saying that she dreams of something then she says its corresponding number? Or when you dream off your teeth falling, your parents will tell you that someone is about to die in the family? That is a typical way of how Filipinos interpret dreams as future tellers. And to be honest, there are a lot out there that actually believes in these dream interpretations.

      Honestly speaking, I can say that we have funny ways of seeing what dreams are. As a dream enthusiast, I am still debating whether I find these beliefs amusing or disturbing. But nevertheless, I still embrace this because no matter what I do, I am still a Filipino that once believed in this myths, and I’m proud of it!