Explain · analogy · Like I'm five version
Why we dream in terms of a late-night TV channel with no listings
Why do we dream while we are fast asleep in our warm beds?
Dreaming is like watching a TV channel that starts only when you close your eyes and has no schedule at all. Your brain is the director, and it decides to play a random movie made of your memories, things you saw today, and silly thoughts you had at lunch. Sometimes the channel shows you playing with a favourite toy, other times it shows a funny cat wearing a hat, and occasionally it just shows a flickering screen of nothing much. The volume is turned way up, so everything feels very real even when a giant dog is trying to teach you how to bake a cake.
The channel does not care about logic, so it skips from your school playground to the moon in a single blink. It is like the TV is stuck on a loop, shuffling clips of your favourite park, that time you dropped your ice cream, and a cartoon you watched last week. It has no remote control, so you just have to sit there and see where the story goes until the sun comes up. You might be the star, or you might just be watching yourself run, which is a very strange way to spend the night.
When the channel decides it has shown enough, it simply switches off. You wake up in your bed and the movie is gone, leaving you to guess what the ending was supposed to be. It is just your brain busy sorting through all the bits and pieces of your day, like a tidy-up time for your head. It is a very busy show, but at least the tickets are free.
Where the analogy breaks downDreams are created by your own brain, while TV channels show programmes made by other people.