Today's almost-profound thought

[bugshaw]

I had an idea - it came to me in a dream. But why do we say "it came to me"? Surely it came from me?

The idea was in the context of a higher education establishment where I was preparing to take a course some weeks hence; a lecturer told me to start now to carve out time for myself, so that when the course started I'd have the study space ready. I thought this made sense, and that I could spend the next month or so doing some serious book-reading, then switch the newly-habitual hours from leisure reading to the coursework when it started.

And then I woke up and found it was all a dream - but possibly a useful one.

Comments

[nallac.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought. The only problem I can see at the moment is that since you're doing something 'leisure', it might be hard to start and continue when other stuff happens.
I'm my case, it would have to be something other than reading, as that's my default nothing to do thing to do.

[cdave]

My default thing, is reading fiction. And I can't really read much non-fiction before going to sleep (which is a most of my reading time).

Carving out a non-fiction time slot sounds like a good plan.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Sometimes we won't listen to useful suggestions when we're awake so they have to come to at us when we're asleep. Try it - see how it works.

[simont]

But why do we say "it came to me"? Surely it came from me?

They're not mutually exclusive! But it came from a part of you to which you don't have convenient conscious access, to a part of you to which you do. The latter is the bit that caused it to be useful, hence the bit that tends to be emphasised in such situations.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

> why do we say "it came to me"?

I suspect the language here came about because a long long time ago we believed that ideas werent created in us - but came from a higher spiritual being (aka god).

We still have language which imlies that ideas are not created but somehow are transferred from one place to another - see the question "Where do you get your ideas fom?"

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

Sounds pretty useful