I Dreamt I Met Keanu Reeves and HE Was Excited to Meet ME!

Last night, I dreamt I met Keanu Reeves.

I was a younger me but with the emotional maturity of my current state, and Keanu was the perfect amalgamation of all Keanus: handsome, witty, and kind.

I was sitting in a comfortable loveseat on a three-season porch at a beach house. There was a row of similar houses. The weather was fair, blue skies, decorative clouds. Just about perfect. And Keanu knocked at the door. As Ted might say, “Excellent!”

Keanu was fascinated with my accomplishments, my work, my life’s purpose. Purely platonic. Safe. Comfortable. I remember asking him, "How did this happen?”

He replied, "I don't know."

He seemed interested in what I had to offer him. In reality, I have long been a fan of his work and, maybe more importantly, his commendable off-camera behavior. What I know about this celebrity is that he has suffered personal hardships, yet his reputation as a nice guy provides all of us with a model of how to be kind and generous.

In the fantastic timeline of dreamscapes, I would meet Keanu, leave him, meet him again, separate, and always come back together to the same porch. However, as the sleeping story randomizes the progression of a dream, our characters' proximity shortened with each subsequent meeting. In the last scene, before I awoke from this dream, we sat side-by-side, me leaning back against Keanu's broad chest, his arms wrapped around me in a "close friend," comforting embrace.

How did this happen?

How does our brain pick and choose from memories, blending them with facts and elevating them with imagined elements? “Memories become decontextualized and schema-like, a process termed gist extraction. Through this process, reliable knowledge is generated as new experiences are matched with existing memory traces” (Vorster et al., 2024). In other words, the storyboard of dreams assembles elements from a file cabinet of lived experiences and then repurposes those realities as a new plot, maybe a new genre.

I don't remember many recent dreams, and it's a bit surprising that this one left such a vivid impression that when my alarm went off at 5 a.m., almost immediately my mind offered me snippets.

As we revisit a dream and try to describe what happened, details emerge, clarify, and seemingly unfurl.

What does a dream mean?

I have recurring dreams of wandering through a large, empty house. These dreams provide me with an adventure. As we see in gothic literature and horror movies, an empty house is usually a trope for frightening situations. But my dreams of these large, vacant mansions feel more like potential and promise.

I still remember two impactful dreams from my youth. In one, the MGM lion jumped out of the television screen and chased me around our living room. The creature’s fierce roar still frightens me to this day. In another, I accidentally pulled off my cat's front paws. Upon awakening, I immediately had to find my dear Twinkle Toes and check to see that he still possessed his front paws, which he obviously did.

When I was studying for my MFA, one professor suggested that writing about dreams is nonfiction because dreams are real, and, therefore, their content is aligned with the true stories of nonfiction.

Sleep and dreaming provide the human body with life-sustaining calm and rest. Indeed, sleep deprivation for an extended period will culminate in death.

I believe my sleep schedule is positive and healthy, a fact corroborated by my fancy Apple watch. Research “shows a promising path for the estimation of perceived sleep quality and that ongoing advancements in sensing technology and signal processing will increase the quality and availability of features in the future” (Moebus and Holz, 2024). I guess I’ll retire my Mickey Mouse watch after all.

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Keanu's character, and indeed my contrived persona of him, appeared to send me a clear message. He repeatedly expressed his admiration for little old me and reiterated that he believed our meeting was nothing short of destiny.

Keanu needed to meet me.

And I needed to meet Keanu.

Can a creative/artist/maker truly receive confirmation and praise from a dream?

If dreams are real, as my professor stated, then on some nonlinear plane, I have met Keanu, and he values who I am and what I do.

If you struggle with self-confidence and motivation to be creative, try this:

• What person, living or dead, do you value as a symbol of integrity?
• Can you conjure a scenario where you meet this person and they advise you?
• Close your eyes and picture the scene.
• Is there a version of your creativity and art-making in which your hero knows you and admires what you do?
• This version exists. However, it constantly vies for your attention while other critical and mean-spirited demons constantly knock you down.
• These demons, naysayers, and crazy-makers, as author and artist Julia Cameron calls them, represent your real-life critics. They could be your mother, your best friend, your named nemesis, your teacher, and worst of all, YOU.
• But your hero is stronger.
• Invite your chosen hero to visit you in your dreams.
• Prepare a soft landing place for them. Give them a present of gratitude.
• Finally, write them a letter thanking them for their encouragement. Yes, write an actual letter with pen and paper. Make your gesture of appreciation tangible.

We are all connected. Keanu Reeves appreciates me as much as I admire him. Our connection is real in some alternate version of my reality. Dreams are real and true, and your dreams will sustain you. Give them space to breathe and expand, and your art-making will thrive.