Blogpost 2: If Only & Precognitive Dreaming

If Only is a romantic drama film that is about the life of Samantha (Jennifer Love Hewitt), a precocious American studying music in London, and her live-in partner Ian (Paul Nicholls), an ambitious Brit who loves his career more than anything. Ian takes Samantha for granted while Samantha on the other hand wants nothing more but to love Ian and be loved in return. As the day begins in the film, Ian is nonchalantly keeps on forgetting important dates and just generally acting like a tool toward his sympathetic girlfriend. At the end of the night, everything comes to a head, as the two abruptly calls it off and Samantha promptly enters a cab that gets in a car crash, killing her. It’s only then that Ian realizes what he had, but of course it’s too late to make amends. Luckily for the grieving boyfriend, when he wakes up the next morning, Samantha is alive again. Even stranger, he’s reliving that fateful day, and he’s the only one who remembers it.

I really like this movie If Only. For me, it's one of the best drama films I've watched. It's not your usual love story and the twist was just amazing, I never saw it coming. Just imagine having a chance to relive a day... Well, not actually relive since he was just really dreaming at first but who wouldn't want something like that? So, you would have the chance to do the things you want and wouldn't have regrets, right? A precognitive dream, that is what Ian had in the first part of the movie.

According to the article, Precognitive Dreams by Rebecca Turner in the site World of Lucid Dreaming: "Precognitive dreams are dreams that appear to predict the future through a sixth sense.".

In the movie, it was obvious that what Ian dreamed of is somewhat a warning to him to learn to appreciate Samantha and all because he might just lose her. So, it was a prediction of the things that will happen that day though the dream made him feel like it already happened before which may be also be called as Déjà vu, which literally means "already seen" in French according to Merriam-Webster's dictionary. Sadly, in the story, everything in his dream really happened. It was somehow in a different way but still, the result was the same. The only thing he prevented from happening is Samantha's death because instead of letting Samantha take the cab alone, he went with her to protect her, that's why he was the one who died instead.

Precognitive dreams are often related to premonition that's why many people confuse premonition and precognition as the same thing but according to the article Psychic Dreams in the site Dream Dictionary: "There is a slight difference between the two; though similar in nature they have the same end result. Premonitions are mixtures of sounds, random images or feelings that flash involuntary in your mind at any given time. Precognition on the other hand presents itself in dreams by using types of symbols, events or odd feelings."

After reading the quote, I realized that the people I know who claim or believe to have such predictions, just have precognition and not premonition because they just dream about it. I've never met a person who experiences premonition though, I mean experiencing random things that flash involuntary in his/her mind at any given time? I think that is just absurd but I would be glad to meet a person who's capable of having premonitions.

A lot of people say precognitive dreaming is true but I guess not unless I experience it myself, that will only be the time that I'll totally believe in it. I have nothing against it though. I mean I believe that the human mind is really way more powerful than what we know right now but after learning about precognitive dreams, it left me with these questions... What if you can really predict the future through your dreams? Would you use it to change the things from happening if you know the outcome will be bad? or would you just let it be and just make the most of it just like what Ian did in the last part of the story?