Dreaming Away

When sleep does not come quickly I listen to the steady rhythm of my heart beat and sometimes wonder what I am missing. The mind is like a shark. It can't stop swimming in thought whether it's asleep or awake.
Why do we dream? I try to convenience myself that dreams are messages and not meaningless narratives that only an unconscious mind can invent. Seldom have one of my dreams had a very realistic plot. Their closer to to random noise with sometimes known but mostly random characters and images attached. Occasionally the dreams are layered with significance and substance but most of the time I question myself "where did that come from". About the only time the dreams make sense is when they are literally a playback of previous events or past or present people. Could it be that dreams are an attempt to search for associations between unrelated experiences? Does the brain replay past and future experiences in it's own sequence through fragile traces that are scattered through out one's subconscious mind?
The mind thinks it always knows best so it's constantly shifting through our life trying to decide what we need to remember and what we need to forget. Freud said "dreams may not have realistic plots but they do have psychological structure as they trace the maze and mysteries of everyday life".
I find dreams fascinating and wish I could remember every dream but obviously thats not going to happen. 99.9% of my dreams are automatically dropped into the file of useless melodramas because I don't want to consume all the mental power it takes to figure what I missed. Insomniac I am not, falling asleep is almost as automatic at turning off the lights. I just wished dreaming and remembering those dreams were as easy.