As I took my seat on a flight today, I couldn’t help but notice my neighbor using sign language over FaceTime. He was presumably speaking to a friend who was signing back over the tiny screen that was propped up in the back of his airplane seat.
I watched in wonder as the two of them fired back and forth hand manipulations and body gestures that contained the depth and precision of the entire Merriam-Webster dictionary.
A few hours later, long after the FaceTime call ended, I saw this gentlemen signing again. But, there wasn’t anyone around who had been signing with him the whole trip so I took a closer look and realized… he was dozing off. In the midst of falling asleep, he was signing… his dreams and/or thoughts.
I have no idea what they were, but boy did this light me up.
It reminded me of a time when I studied extra hard for an oral Spanish final and dreamed in Spanish the night it was over. It didn’t last very long, but it blew my mind the morning after.
We dream in the language we know. And not just that—we dream within the confines of the words (gestures) we know inside the language. If you want to dream more deeply, more vividly, more precisely—not just while you sleep, but while you’re awake—explore the depths of your language.