Dreams do tend to follow certain patterns. For example, pregnant women have nightmares about their future babies. Everyone gets chased sometimes (in their dreams), and it is apparently quite common to have flying dreams in which one has difficulty avoiding overhead power lines.
    What is not dreamed about may be as significant as what is dreamed about. We observe that certain topics and certain styles of dream occur more frequently than others.
    For example I commonly have "bird-spotting" dreams, in which I am observing some new species of bird. It is true that I have done some bird-spotting in the past including a seven week bout in Australia not too long ago. Yet the dreams occur even now, when it is not a major thing on my mind. There may be something significant in the fact that when I do go bird-spotting it becomes a fairly obsessive activity, and that it involves a certain type of experience, i.e. continually seeking to see something that I have never seen before.
    Other activities and even concerns that demand considerable attention daily nevertheless occur very rarely in my dreams. For example, the places in my dreams are generally not the places I live in and travel through in my daily life: they are either locations not visited recently, or they are completely imaginary. At least one other person has commented to me that their dreams are dominated by past life and acquaintances rather than present ones.
    Some dream activities are things that one might do but so far hasn't. For example I use to have driving dreams when I didn't drive, and no matter how hard I pressed the accelerator (in the dream), the car would hardly move. Once I started driving regularly, this type of dream ceased to occur.
    There may be a lot that can be learned from identifying patterns like these that occur across different individuals according to different aspects of their waking lives, problems and personalities.